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We Face the Music
28 Plays5 years ago
Josh and M revisit conspiracy theories about music, this time with more Blink 182 and Megadeth references!
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ
and learn more about their academic work at:
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Transcript
Introduction: Podcaster's Guide and Pirate Day
00:00:09
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. I am Josh Edison sitting next to me, Dr. M. Denteth. No, no hooch. Ahoy there! The reason why there's no hooch, Joshua. Do you know what day it is today? Ash Wednesday. It's international, it's not like a pirate's day. Is it? And pirates drink rum. And thus, the hooch today is rum. If it's international talk like a pirate day, then it's also International Suffrage Day, and I haven't heard anyone talking about that. Seems a little strange.
00:00:47
Speaker
I believe it's our days. Tomorrow, in our terms, was International Pirate Day. Talk like a pirate day today. Don't make me explain to the pirate day. You have to make your eyes move a lot to be a pirate. I thought it was September 19th, by the way. Anyway, yes, it is International. I didn't actually know they were still doing that, to be honest, but I was aware of the concept. It's in my calendar. Also, have you seen me missing, Marst? Yes. It's missing.
Revisiting Listener Feedback and Corrections
00:01:14
Speaker
Apparently not anymore. No.
00:01:16
Speaker
Anyway, right, so enough pirate-related content. I mean, it's the September the 19th. What are the dates today, Joshua? September the 19th, but I thought suffrage day was also September the 19th. Well, maybe it is. But do you know what comes before suffrage?
00:01:33
Speaker
roughage a lot of sexism and what a pirates not very sexist because you know pirates were the democracy of the sea and there are lots of lady pirates I've been very licentious doing that you did a little bit there lady pirates the podcast listeners can't tell but there was a lot of eyebrow wagling going on just then and quite frankly I don't approve just rein that in young fellow
00:01:57
Speaker
You wee scrubber. Have you seen me missing last? No I haven't because it doesn't exist because you don't have a ship because you're not a pirate. Yes exactly. Now let's see but so we're kind of doing the same thing we did last week as it turns out. We're revisiting an old topic but with new stuff.
00:02:16
Speaker
But it's a result of viewer email. Eric, thank you, Eric. So this is a nature case of us repeating content because we've run out of content. This is because we had someone who emailed into the show and said, you haven't talked about X, Y, or Z in case. Actually, we did. But a long time ago. Back around episode 14. Indeed, all the way back to episode 5 for some of it. Wow.
00:02:42
Speaker
That's five years ago. That's a long time ago. So quite frankly, we're justified in bringing it up again, I think. We also had a theological correction from Rachel about the nature of the sacrifice that Cain and Abel engaged in in Genesis and my contention that maybe God hates vegetarians because Cain only offered vegetables. Apparently it's not the case. It's because Cain didn't offer his best vegetables.
00:03:07
Speaker
Right. Well, always offer your best vegetables. I think that's good advice for life. We forgot last week to say that the week before last, when we were talking about America, and there was an episode involving Valerie Plain, and neither of us could actually remember who she was and hadn't bothered to research it beforehand. So very quickly googled and got something wrong. And got it completely wrong. And so that was a comment on the YouTube channel, I think, put us right on that.
00:03:31
Speaker
Darn, something like that. Anyway, I could sum it up, but I'd just get it wrong again. So quite frankly, we were completely wrong about who exactly what it was Valerie Plain did. So look her up on Wikipedia is all I can say.
Musical Conspiracy Theories Overview
00:03:42
Speaker
Also, you know what I'm going to ask? Is it the whereabouts of your mizzen mast? I don't need it. I will tell you where your mizzen mast is if you can tell me what a mizzen mast is. It's a little thing, the very front of the ship. Isn't that a spar or a...
00:03:59
Speaker
You don't even know, do you? I did know. I used to. I can't remember. I know which one the poop deck is, though. It's the bizzling one up the back. We don't talk about poop deck on the podcast. It's going to be embarrassing. Fine. We'll depart the poop deck and set sail for the seas of musical conspiracy theory. No, we won't, because the hidden foundman is in Mars. But we'll try anyway. Yep. You can do this while I'm excited.
00:04:23
Speaker
I once ran an entire meeting using a pirate voice on Talk Like a Pirate Day. I can do this forever. Well, I'm sure this won't be interminable. Let's get on with it. I would like to point out before we start, if you don't think I like rum particularly much. No, I don't like it at all. But you don't drink? Well, no, not because I don't like it.
00:04:49
Speaker
Well, fair enough. I mean, that does follow. Speaking of terrible voices, though, the sound quality may be a bit lower again because we're still relying on backup equipment. The laptop is still dead and may not even be back in working service by this time next week. It could be a little bit dicey as to whether I get it back by next Thursday. And it's going to be an expensive fix. It's an expensive laptop and it's broken in the most expensive way possible. Just like you.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yes, I am broken the most expected way possible. That's why I'm drinking rum. So there's some sort of cruel irony, perhaps, in that we're doing an episode all about the world of music and yet recording it on dodgier sound equipment than all, but we'll just have to soldier through.
00:05:32
Speaker
As we said, we've got some old stuff. We've got some new stuff. We've got a lot of stuff. Actually, I'll be surprised if we can get through this in the time normally allotted to us. Which is why we will focus on the new stuff and go into the old stuff if time allows. So we have... We're doing musical conspiracy theories. Yes. We're doing conspiracy theories about music. The world of music. Musicians. Conspiracy theories.
00:05:55
Speaker
there on. Which seem to come in about three flavors here. We've
Dave Mustaine's Conspiracies
00:06:00
Speaker
got prominent musicians who are conspiracy theorists. We've got the the old raft of dead musicians. And strawberry cream.
00:06:10
Speaker
No, and also this used to do with plagiarism, which often invoke conspiracies and who's doing what secretly and so on and so forth. I'm not sure it was strawberry cream. No, well you did wrong. Is it genderly lace? No, so to make up for your ignorance, tell me about Megadeath.
00:06:28
Speaker
You started drinking before this episode, didn't you? That bottle of ramen. The rum apparently goes through me in a way that whiskey never has. I'm also, those of you watching a video, I'm now trapped in cables.
00:06:42
Speaker
You may well be aware of the band Metallica, and you may well be aware that one of its prominent members from the original lineup, Dave Mustaine, ended up forming the band Megadeth. And Megadeth is one of those heavy metal staples, very famous for its iconography and art and the like during the 80s. But what's interesting about Dave Mustaine, who...
00:07:05
Speaker
Engaged in some albums with rather graphic and violent covers, he converted to Christianity of the Jack Chick variety, so for those of you who don't remember who Jack Chick is, rather rather fundamentalist Pentecostal style Christianity that hates homosexuals. Publish those amusing little booklets.
00:07:26
Speaker
Well, amusing and disturbing little booklets which are amusing from a kind of distant untanged people who actually believe them. So the kind of Christianity then is very, very intolerant in a way which maybe makes you think that the kind of Jesus Christ described in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospels,
00:07:47
Speaker
probably wouldn't appreciate that form of Christianity. Because either kind of Christians don't like prostitutes. And whether or not you think the whole story about Mary Magdalene is about a prostitute being rehabilitated by the Christian Messiah, or just simply a tale of woman's empowerment with a prominent female figure,
00:08:08
Speaker
being in the gospel stories, Dave Mustaine is not the kind of person who would tolerate that kind of liberal nonsense. But he's also a really really big fan of Alex Jones. And also best friend to Charlie Sheen, but that's kind of by the by. So yeah, Dave Mustaine released an album in 2009 called In Game.
00:08:29
Speaker
and in-game is named after a 2011 documentary by Alex Jones which detailed the blueprint for global enslavement. And the album apparently based upon the documentary is all about people being run by the people who have money. Is that a coded anti-Semitism thing or just general anti-establishment?
00:08:50
Speaker
Do you think that Alex Jones is a crypto anti-semit? Yes. Then do you think that someone who based a documentary, sorry, based an album, based on a documentary by Alex Jones might also share that kind of crypto anti-semitic beliefs? I would not be staggered with disbelief. I'd say it's quite probable.
Tom DeLonge and UFOs
00:09:13
Speaker
So he's an Alex Jones style conspiracy theorist. Has that resulted in anything
00:09:20
Speaker
It's mostly resulted in an album based upon an instrument documentary. I have a quote here from an interview when he was being asked about it I'll put it in my best Dave Mustaine voice. Is the Dave Mustaine voice a pirate voice? Yes, yes it is. Right.
00:09:36
Speaker
Me as a Christian, I believe it's a one world government, one world currency. It's part of me belief, and I said so in Megadeth classic song, Holy Walls, it is part of the master plan. It's what I believe. I ascribed to that when I became a Christian. I know that there's going to be a cataclysmic ramping up of all the things we're seeing right now, and it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse. Now I'm being sound like a Belfast detective. Darn, it's been a murder.
00:10:05
Speaker
We're watching our country disintegrate right now, and it's scary. You know, when I started thinking I'm going to be moving with Megadeth's Canadian-born drummer Sean Drover back up to Canada, that's scary. And that's what endgame's all about. It's about educating our fans and showing them a little bit about what's going on within the previous administration. And if things haven't changed at all, it's just more people being run by the people who have the money.
00:10:29
Speaker
Who may or may not be the Jews. Sorry, I didn't begin to sound like a Northern Irish politician at the other point. Or possibly tag it Northern Scottish, I don't know. There's been a murder. Yep. So he's one of those Americans who wanted to flee to Canada from the threat of enroaching socialism, not realising that Canada is considerably. So either he doesn't know where Canada is, or he gave up because he actually lives in Tennessee.
00:10:56
Speaker
which seems to be in the kind of opposite direction of fleeing to Canada. But yes, he's one of those people who doesn't seem to realise that other countries are immensely more socialist than the US. So we're going to flee the socialist dictatorship of Obamaism by fleeing to Canada, where they have socialised healthcare.
Music Plagiarism Cases
00:11:18
Speaker
And apparently he says he's not a birther, he just doesn't believe Obama was born in America. Yes, because when he was challenged you're a birther, I don't know what that term means. I just think that there are serious questions that need to be asked about Obama's birth certificate.
00:11:33
Speaker
Right, so Dave Mustaine, quirky fellow. Tom DeLonge though, his name has come up before in this podcast. Yes, but not when we talked about musical conspiracy theory. No. So Tom DeLonge, who... Of Blink-182. Yeah. You all know that, obviously being big fans of early 2000s pop punk
00:11:54
Speaker
stuff. All the small things. So Tom DeLong is really, really, really into UFOs. I mean really into UFOs to the point where it's kind of his career now. So he runs this thing called To The Stars Academy. And we've covered that in the past when we talked about Luis
00:12:17
Speaker
And it's under of the AATIP which was apparently a group running out of the US Air Force looking into UAP UFO style related shenanigans and there's actually been an update just this week here today about Tom DeLonge and to the Stars Academy because
00:12:37
Speaker
To The Stars Academy may have proved the existence of UFOs. Well... I'm using the term UFO there quite deliberately. Right, not UAPs.
00:12:48
Speaker
Well, that design, but I'm not using the word alien flying saucer, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's actually three words. The Two of the Stars Academy... Also, have you seen The Miz and Mars? I've not. Could have been abducted by aliens, who knows? My Miz and Mars has been abducted by aliens? Yeah, sort of thing. It's going to get really hard to get back. No, the Two of the Stars Academy posted three videos called FLIR1, Gimbal and Go Fast.
00:13:09
Speaker
for some reason, which I assume are the ones that have been talked about in the past. There's that one in particular from a shot from a fighter planes camera showing this wheel object zipping around. Yeah, videos they date from between 2004 and 2015. And basically...
00:13:25
Speaker
The Navy has said, yes, they're genuine. Now, that doesn't mean, yes, the Navy believes in the existence of alien lifeforms. It's just, yes, this is footage that did indeed come from Navy fighter jets of unidentified flying objects.
00:13:42
Speaker
which have been described as oval shaped with no obvious wings or tail nor visible exhausts. Although that's not the ones where people said that possibly it's just to do with the way the camera is not at all steady and camera movement is mistaken. I mean it's one of those things where
00:14:03
Speaker
Because you have trained pilots and people who are trained to look at footage going, we don't know what's in the footage, it is one of those situations where it may look like nothing to us, but it does look like something interesting to the experts who are going, we just don't know what that is. And that's kind of interesting.
00:14:23
Speaker
Yes, so there we go. Dave Mustaine, Tom Long, like them some conspiracy theories of fairly different varieties. They do indeed. So we've got the celebrity deaths now, but I think there are all things we have talked about. Should we do a bit of plagiarism? Because I don't know if that... We've talked about plagiarism in the literary context and conspiracy theories thereof.
00:14:44
Speaker
I've done a few times for music, have we? So you're saying we should move away from highly speculative conspiracy theories about in-games, about the New World Order, or the existence of alien life. Go for something real, man. Yes. Do you approve? Have you seen my Miz and Mast? Yes. Good.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, so there are lots and lots of cases in the past of people plagiarising music or accusing others of having plagiarised their music, and it can be quite difficult, possibly even more so than with literature, because music kind of operates on set rules, sort of.
00:15:25
Speaker
and also there are kind of recognizable elements of music which can be remarkably short in a way that a short piece of prose wouldn't be taken to be copying so a musical sting can be three or four notes but be so unique
00:15:41
Speaker
and placed in a particular way in a song you've taken that from elsewhere whilst using even five of the same words in sequence well that's actually that's just coincidence there are only a loaded number of ways to describe igneous rocks when you want to describe them erosically yes
00:16:01
Speaker
I'm a big fan of the mash-up genre. I like me some clever mash-ups. And I do find it quite interesting the way you can get two songs that on the surface sound quite different, but then you realise actually they have the same chord progression and timing and can actually be laid over top of each other and it doesn't sound strange. Brilliant, Scissor Sisters mash-up album out there which is just unbelievably good.
00:16:27
Speaker
The one that gets me is, in the end by Linkin Park, goes perfectly over top of All Star by Smash Mouth. It's frighteningly seamless, given that the two songs are so different sounding, but same time signature, same chord progression. And that's on top of the fact that some people literally sample parts of songs, and some people cover songs, and some people remix songs, and there's all sorts of stuff there.
00:16:51
Speaker
and a long history of up until at least the beginning of the 20th century in the advent of the recording of music it was quite customary to perform other people's songs and modify other people's songs but the existence of music copyright suddenly made something which was basically the commons kind of disappear
00:17:14
Speaker
So, I mean, some recent examples that I was aware of, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Danny California, people coming to that sounds an awful lot like Mary Jane's Last Dance by Tom Petty. And they sort of said, well, it kind of is, but as some people pointed out, the chord progression is like
00:17:34
Speaker
I can't remember exactly, it's CDAC or something, but Danny California is CDA minor C. There's a difference in a minor key in one of the chords in the chord progression or something. People are like, yeah, whatever, live with it. The very first time I heard Dawn This Way by Lady Gaga, I was sitting there going,
00:17:54
Speaker
This is a Madonna song, isn't it? Express yourself. This is bloody express yourself by Madonna. And I was not the only person to think that. And Lady Gaga's reaction was only so many chord progressions, dude. It's, you know, it sounds similar, but just deal with it. Things changed a little bit in 2015. They did indeed.
00:18:17
Speaker
the old blurred lines rather blurred the lines about copyright it sure did nice segue there i have to say um yeah i mean blurred lines a lot of people did not like blurred lines given that it was kind of rape culture the musical um
00:18:33
Speaker
And so a lot of people were quite happy when Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams got taken to court by the family of Marvin Gaye for ripping off Marvin Gaye. What was interesting about this particular case is that they weren't accusing them of ripping off any one particular song. It was more just sort of about the feel of Marvin Gaye in general. And it went through a couple of appeals and eventually the ruling, Marvin Gaye's family was awarded $7.4 million US for copyright infringement. The ruling went against Robin Thicke.
00:19:03
Speaker
And a lot of people like Ha Ha, Robin Thicke, that'll teach her for doing stupid sexist song. A lot of musicians were like, this is kind of a worrying precedent, because now we've said that in the past, people would say, yeah, these songs sound similar, deal with it. And work by taking one song and showing matches between sections of one song and sections of another song, as opposed to saying, this song sounds like this genre over here.
00:19:31
Speaker
And they said, oh yes it is, very Marvin Gaye, she has the same sort of instruments, and this rock Pharrell Williams does, it's kind of a pastiche, it's sort of a mixture of all of his style, but yeah, and so ever since then, now that there's a court ruling saying if your song sounds a bit like someone else's song, you can get done for copyright infringement, artists are a lot more circumspect, so
00:19:52
Speaker
more recently now the one that got me was um stay with me by sam smith which a lot of people said sounded like i went back down by again tom petty i think uh tom petty and the heartbreakers um now that was an interesting case they settled out of court they did come to a settlement and tom petty got co-writing credits on um stay with me but tom petty himself actually said i don't think he plagiarized me there's only so many chord progressions but yes it does you know
00:20:19
Speaker
so happened that he chose one that sounded exactly like our song, and so they still went with it. The other one, Ed Sheeran's Shape of You, because the bit where it goes, and grab on my waist and put that body on me, people said that sounds like no scrubs, where he says, scrub is a guy who get nothing from me. It was like a very short bit of it sounded exactly like another bit of another song, and that was enough that they settled, and they got co-writing credits. Taylor Swift,
00:20:48
Speaker
when she put out look what you made me do and people said look look what you made me do sounds a lot like i'm too sexy for my shirt and so she just straight away gave Wright said fred co-writing credits for that song it's now become the same the secret to giving josh to sing on the podcast is to make him talk about musical genres yes um so yeah so so the conspiracies go around that's it's i guess it's got even more murky now when you can say what's what i think when i thought we should emphasize that the conspiracy angle here is
00:21:17
Speaker
People deliberately copy the song. And then covering up the fact. Oh no, it's just a quiz. It's just a quiz. It's not real. I wasn't copying. There's only so many chord progressions out there. Unlike, of course, an earlier one, of course, The Good Old Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice, which quite blatantly sampled the bass line of Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, but added one note on the end that goes...
00:21:46
Speaker
Six, six wonderlines. And apparently to begin with, Vanilla Ice tried to say that he hadn't sampled it and it was entirely original and basically was just got told, what the hell are you
Celebrity Death Conspiracies
00:21:56
Speaker
talking about? Jesus Christ, man, you're ripping off Queen and David Bowie. How would you think no one would notice that? And so he did, actually. When you're going to rip things off, you have to go, you have to go back because people are less likely to believe you'd gone back. But so that was a case of a person actually ripping something off and then trying to pretend that he had not and then getting found out. But
00:22:14
Speaker
It's, yeah, it's easy to make sort of conspiratorial-type claims. Hard to back them up, but due to recent developments, that kind of doesn't matter so much anymore. Yes, and I mean, there's been a long history of people being accused of ripping off another song and them going, but I didn't. So, Elastika was accused by Suede of stealing the beginning of a song. Elastika's response was, I mean, we've heard Suede, so he may have been influenced by them.
00:22:43
Speaker
But we didn't deliberately set out a copy of that beginning, it just turned out that was the best way to start the song, and it does sound like something we've probably heard. So yes, it's a much greyer area, but nevertheless, if we're going to talk about music and conspiracy theories, that's where you'll find a bunch.
00:23:02
Speaker
But I think we've put it off enough. Let's get back to the fun stuff. We've covered the fun stuff before because it was the fun stuff, but now I think we really need to get into it. Yeah, we need to sort out the west-east coast rapper situation. Well, shall we start with that? I think so. Okay, so obviously Tupac and Biggie, if you're talking about celebrity deaths that have conspiracy theories around them, the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious B.I.G.
00:23:27
Speaker
Now, Josh, where do you sit on the east-west coast divide? I prefer my Tupac to my biggie, but I have no strong feelings either way. Interesting. Interesting. So, who killed Tupac Shakur, you Tupac lover?
00:23:43
Speaker
Well, indeed. So the official, officially his murder remains unsolved. He was killed in a drive-by shooting in September of 1996. Some people don't think he's dead. Well, yeah, that's the other one. This has also come up in this podcast. Some people claim that they've seen photographs of a person who looks exactly like what they think Tupac Shakur would look like now. Or people have seen music videos where he's wearing Nikes that weren't released by the time he died.
00:24:06
Speaker
He also had an amazing career post-death. Amazing. I don't think any artist has released so many music videos post-death as Tupac's show. Which gave rise to some of the conspiracy theories around his death. There are some people who think that Tupac and Biggie were basically worth more to their label dead than alive. They had enough of a back catalogue of things that could be put out and his death would sort of give the publicity boost and so that's why they conspired to kill him. Some people think
00:24:36
Speaker
Some people think he was killed by Shug Knight, the owner of his music label that he was signed to, because Tupac Shakur was going to leave the label. Some people think that both Tupac and Big E's music labels got together to organise both of their deaths, to hype up the East Coast rivalry and again make bigger and better record sales and so on. In both cases though,
00:25:05
Speaker
There are open cases, the police have not officially said who. There was a big investigation by the Los Angeles Times in 2002, which put forward the theory that Tupac had been killed by the Southside Crips gang, who had gotten to trouble with shortly beforehand. There was a documentary, and I'm pretty sure we mentioned this at the time as well, in 2017.
00:25:30
Speaker
two-part assassination battle for Compton which made the claim we could have mentioned the 2017 because we recorded it pre 2017 did we
00:25:40
Speaker
Well, this is episode 14. No, no, this is much later. This was an update that came up many years after that. Have you seen my mizzenmas? I haven't not. There was one document that said that Shug Knight himself was actually the target of the assassination attempt, and they got to Park instead. Mr Knight, who had to that point refused to say anything about it, apparently came forward and said, yeah, that's what he thinks happened.
00:26:07
Speaker
But still, it's all very much up in the air, and that's kind of implied, and you probably know this already, but the other thing to say is, of course, that when Tupac Shakur was killed late September 1996, Big E's killed six months later, early 1997, the immediate assumption was that his killing was a reprisal, the whole East Coast-West Coast thing, a reprisal for Tupac's death in the first place. So there are a whole bunch of conspiracy theories going around that one, but to date,
00:26:34
Speaker
Nothing's been, uh, decided upon. Well, should my boss keep putting his foot on it? Well, he's, uh, short for sugar beer, which I assume is an ironic nickname because he does not appear to be in any way cuddly. Or made of sugar. Or made of sugar, no, or an actual beer. He's a human being, people. It's not a beer at all. The rap scene is film. False advertising. Dr. Dre, he's not a doctor.
00:26:59
Speaker
Isn't it? No. Then why did I let him remove my kidney? That's between you and he, but... Anyway, so that's the big one. I did wonder about the scars, but, you know, this all was fashionable. So we first talked about Tupac and Biggie in episode 14, as you say, with a few other updates in the intervening years. Episode 14, we also talked about Paul McCartney. Now, this is a classic. This has been around since when the old...
00:27:26
Speaker
Abbey Road cover where the Beatles are walking across the road at Abbey Road. Was that 60s early 70s? When did Abbey Road come out? Before my time anyway. Before anyone's born. Anyone.
00:27:40
Speaker
So I'm just thinking of a completely different podcast that made a very good joke about Daniel Craig recently. And now that I'm talking about it, I should probably just say what the joke is. So, Barshans, which is the Stuart Ashens.
00:27:57
Speaker
Barry Lewis podcast. They did a thing about Ian Fleming recently, and they made a joke about how Daniel Craig's been playing James Bond now for about 42 years, or at least it feels that way, in case of this, before Ian Fleming was even writing James Bond, in case of Daniel Craig is pre-James Bond. Yes, before Ian Fleming was born, Daniel Craig was James Bond, pre-sperm James Bond.
00:28:27
Speaker
Prescream James found us a good line, I'll grant you that. But Paul McCartney is what we're here to talk about. As he did. Answer the question! I wish he were! Because, frankly, what he's produced post the post, I will say, post the Beatles, post Wings, has been pretty awful. I mean, this is the person who came up with not only the frog chorus, but that really, really dreadful music video for the video game Destiny.
00:28:53
Speaker
Didn't see it. After this podcast, I will show you that. I will not push. And your life will be ruined forever. It will be more ruined than it is now. So why do people think he's dead? Because the cover of Abbey Road shows him without shoes, and apparently that's evidence that that showed he had passed on by that particular point in time.
00:29:15
Speaker
other reason why people think he's did is the dramatic change in output from the Beatles and post the Beatles which is in part due to the fact of the breakdown of the relationship between Paul McCartney and John Lennon so they were collaborative partners and it's quite obvious given their subsequent output
00:29:35
Speaker
that they were much reduced by not working together because John Lennon's career post The Beatles is awful. I will fight you if you say Imagine is a good song. Imagine is a terrible song. I thought about terrible but I'm not a fan. It's a terrible song Joshua. Okay. And Paul McCartney once again did the frog chorus.
00:29:57
Speaker
So people want to explain why there is this difference between the Paul McCartney of classic Beatles age and what happened afterwards given that Abbey Road was the last Beatles album and saying that Paul McCartney is dead is one way to explain this remarkable change.
00:30:13
Speaker
And I think we kind of mentioned this in another episode later on. There are lots of pop artists died and got replaced by others out there. People claim
Conclusion and Bonus Content
00:30:23
Speaker
that she died either after her second or third album. And one of the backup dancers who looked remarkably like her stepped in to take over, which is why her output has been terrible ever since. People want to explain these things not by going
00:30:40
Speaker
They changed producers, they changed writing partners. No, no, they died. They died and were replaced by a double. And were replaced by a robot. Yeah. Now, episode 14, we also talked about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, which isn't, it's not super conspiratorial more as much as it is just mysterious, given that, if you don't know Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen,
00:31:07
Speaker
met a tragic end, Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious if you're not aware, came to from a heroin bender to find Nancy Spungen dead in the bathtub of their hotel room with a knife in her. He was the only other guy around. The assumption was that when he was out of his nut on heroin, he'd killed her.
00:31:26
Speaker
he claimed to have no idea because he was out of his nut on heroin. Some people have claimed that possibly while he was passed out someone else had come in and killed her to frame him for it, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for that whatsoever. And then not long after, while he was sort of up on charges for that, he died of what was either
00:31:46
Speaker
an accidental overdose, suicide by overdose, or murder where his sister suggested that his mother had given him an overdose knowing that he wouldn't be able to survive in prison and wanting to put him out of his misery. It's a little bit conspiratorial, but mostly it's just heroin's a hell of a drug. I wouldn't know. No, neither would I, fortunately. But you can't talk about
00:32:11
Speaker
Curt and Courtney without talking about Sid and Nancy first. And now that we have, we can talk about Curt and Courtney, which was episode five. Five of this. That was possibly the first time you let me pick the topic. I'm not sure. And given that I think the 90s was an awful period of time. And I think you're wrong.
00:32:31
Speaker
and that grunge is one of the worst kinds of music ever created again do not concur i will once again allow you to take lead on a topic i have no interest in whatsoever certainly um so yes we all know Kurt Cobain died by self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1994 or did he um a lot of people first of all some people
00:32:54
Speaker
started saying something was fishy with his supposed suicide right from the start then people started blaming it on Courtney Love mostly because people just didn't like Courtney Love I think which isn't fair. It's a shame because I will say the 90s are awful but Hole is a brilliant band and so much better than Nirvana. I like Nirvana but I do quite like Hole as well and indeed
00:33:15
Speaker
Like, part of the thing where people wanted to say that Courtney Love was just sort of riding on Kurt Cobain's coattails. She was sort of basking in his fame. A, if that were true, why would she kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? B, it wasn't really true because Hole was bigger than Nirvana when they first got together, even though Nirvana eventually... There's a good argument to say that Nirvana plagiarised Hole, not the other way around. It's entirely possible.
00:33:39
Speaker
So why did people think it might not have been suicide? There were claims, there was this Seattle Public Access host by the name of Richard Lee who apparently saw the crime scene and claimed that it didn't look right.
00:33:53
Speaker
This was kind of a, seemed to be a result of a lay person who expected things to look like they do in the movies. When you hear that Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head with a shotgun, you assume that most of his head was missing and his brains were all over the wall. Apparently it was not that kind of shotgun. There wasn't an exit wound, as far as I can tell. When he was first found, people didn't even notice, know that he was dead until they saw there was blood trickling out from behind his head. It was mostly brain mush rather than anything else.
00:34:16
Speaker
So there was his suicide note, where his handwriting noticeably changes at one point, which is at the point where the note becomes explicitly a suicide note, whereas up until then it had just sort of been him complaining about his life, sort of.
00:34:41
Speaker
But then other people have said he had taken a whole lot of heroin, and that could just have been the heroin coming on. And indeed, apparently, in later years when his journals were found and discovered, you could see there were two sets of handwriting. There was sober Kurt and heroin Kurt, and the two sort of handwritings did kind of match.
00:35:01
Speaker
Some people said that he had too much heroin in his system, that he must have either been overdosed or at least rendered insensible and then killed. The reply to which is, he was a heroin addict, he was really good at taking heroin. The amount of heroin you or I, as mere heroin dilettantes, would need to take.
00:35:20
Speaker
Just to take the edge off a long day. No, to get a decent high, he would take much more than the... He was more of a heroine than the average bear. He knew he was a bigger boat. Also, by the way, have you seen my mizzenmas? No, where is it? Have you seen your mizzenmas? That's what matters.
00:35:44
Speaker
So yeah, there were lots of questions asked. There was also his previous supposed suicide attempt that happened earlier in Rome, which again some people had supposedly had taken a bunch of pills and champagne or something, and some people had seemed to think that that couldn't have happened the way it had been said and thought that maybe Courtney Love had slipped a mimicki or something, and that this time it didn't work that time, and this time she finished him off for good or something.
00:36:13
Speaker
So there were conspiracy theory angles around, but again, a lot of supposition, a lot of lay people thinking, expecting things to be one way because they've watched many movies. And a lot of people not wanting a musical hero theirs to be dead. Yep.
00:36:29
Speaker
And going back to the Beatles really, a little bit sort of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, people said, you know, why did John Lennon have to get shot when we didn't like Yoko? Why was Kurt the one who had to die when we were all busy hating on Courtney? It was an unfair thing. I said this back in episode five. My suspicion is that
00:36:48
Speaker
When they talk about aesthetics and art in the 20th century, Yoko Ono is probably going to be more famous than the Beatles when the final history is a rustle. Because she's a much more interesting conceptual artist in that way. Both bestsellers tend to be forgotten within 100 years. Yes, I don't know. Certainly
00:37:11
Speaker
Courtney Lovers, in terms of music of the 90s, I think Grunge came and went and so on, but one of the bigger things was woman and rock music, which doesn't seem to be so much of a thing now. I was reading a documentary, Lovers a Mixtape. Well, not documentary, a autobiography, Lovers a Mixtape by a guy who wrote for the Rolling Stone.
00:37:31
Speaker
He talks about his life and his wife who also worked for the Rolling Stone and died, but there's a line in it where some do talking about 90s music and some guy says to them, you know, come on guys, what does 90s rock have that 70s rock didn't? And the wife immediately replies tits.
00:37:48
Speaker
because that was sort of the thing. This was the decade when woman and rock music became a really big thing and Courtney Love was right dead center of that. So you could be right, could be the same thing now. I went to a whole tribute night, only a few months ago on K Road. It was brilliant. Good. We got four whole tribute bands. Excellent.
00:38:09
Speaker
that know there were four Hull tribute bands in New Zealand and Auckland. Well, fair enough. And each one was slightly better than the last and they were all good. Sorry I missed it. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it. Yes, you would have done. So I think we've come to the end. I think we've managed to shoot through every single one of the music related conspiracy theories we had done.
00:38:34
Speaker
discussed in the past and not discussed in the past, as it turned out. And as luck would have it, we're about to run out of time on the recording of this episode, if we haven't already. For the podcast listeners, the memory card that we record on is a FAT32 one and has a strict file size limit. And if we record 1.6 segment of video for too long,
00:38:57
Speaker
It hits that file limit and we end up losing the last few minutes of video. The podcast listeners won't know the video. People who watch this on the video will have found all too regularly that we end up missing the last couple of minutes. I put some silly apologetic message up. So it's possible that's already happened. If it hasn't, we might as well finish up now just to be sure.
00:39:14
Speaker
But for those of you who are patrons, and there are so many of you delicious patrons out there these days, we've got exciting content coming up in the patron bonus episode. We've got warnings over that Area 51 event. More UFOs. We've got an interesting setback for Milo Yiannopoulos. Another one. Can't even go to a ferry convention now without being cancelled. An update on Friend of the Show, Jacob Wong. Not actually a friend.
00:39:42
Speaker
And an update on 9-11, a topic we didn't actually even mention on 9-11 this year. No, we probably should have, but I mean how many times? I actually forgot.
00:39:53
Speaker
I didn't forget because it was our friend Nick's birthday, whose birthday is September the 11th. I mean, I always associate 9-11 with Nick's birthday, but when it came to the preparation of the podcast last week, I probably should have said something, I suppose. So yes, we'll say something in the bonus content, which you will hear if you're a patron. If you're not a patron, good for you, that's cool. If you want to be a patron, though, go to patreon.com or conspiracism.podbean.com and sign yourselves up.
00:40:18
Speaker
your wacky things. Yep, even just a dollar a month you get two episodes a week. I mean that's that's twice the value. Depending on how your metrics work. Could go either way I suppose.
00:40:35
Speaker
Um, so all that remains, I think, now is to say goodbye from me. And I'll say, totally pip, because I found me Mrs. Marst, and so now I can sail off into the future. Well, it all turned out nicely, I'm glad. Darrrr. Goodbye.
00:40:59
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:42:00
Speaker
And remember, remember, oh December was a night. Now what that sounds like is recording, I have no idea! Render the entire podcast unusable due to pirate force.