Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign Guys, if you haven't heard me talk about Groons before, you're about to right now. There's a reason I'm talking about Groons. You know, I love Groons. They're a convenient comprehensive formula packed into a snack pack of gummies to get you through your day. Guys, this is not a multivitamin, a greens gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of these things. And it's all these things at a fraction of the price. And it tastes great. And also, I'm not standing over my counter with green powder flying all over the place in my kitchen trying to make a drink. You know what I'm saying? Groons is a totally different thing. Daily snack pack of gummies. Because you can't fit the amount of nutrients Groons fits into just one gummy. Plus, I'm telling you, I'm watching what I'm eating these days and I look forward to eating Groons. They taste great. It's a treat with 6 grams of prebiotic fiber, which is three times the amount of dietary fiber compared to the lean greens powders. For context, that's more than two cups of broccoli and it tastes better than broccoli. There's the Groonie Smith apple flavor. Okay, that's my new go to. That's the Grun's fall flavor. I'm here for it. It's only available through October. It's got the same full body benefits that you know and love from Gruens, but this time tastes like you're walking through an apple orchard in a cable knit sweater. Getting those New England vibes, all that warm apple cider. You know, those apple cider donuts. Maybe you're buying a little corn on the cob for later that day. You know what I'm talking about. Gruen's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. I love Groons. They taste great, they are super convenient and they are chalk filled with healthy benefits. Grab your limited edition Groony Smith apple Groons, available only through October. Stock up because they will sell out. Get up to 52% off. Use the code Disgraceland.
B (2:00)
You open the fridge, there's nothing there. So what's it gonna be? Greasy pizza? Sad Drive Thru Burgers. Dish by Blue Apron is for nights like that. These are the pre made meals of your dreams. At least 20 grams of protein. No artificial flavors or colors. No chopping, no cleanup. No guilt. Keep the flavor, ditch the subscription. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20 Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com Terms for Disgraceland is a.
A (2:31)
Production of Double Elvis. This is a story about inversion, about what happens when you take something ancient, something sacred, and you turn it upside down. It's about the sound of doom echoing from the basement of a suburban Virginia home. It's about mystery tapes and cheap pawn shop stereos. About the thin line between myth and memory. It's a story about drugs, demons, and deals that may or may not have ever gone down. And it's also a story about a curse. One which may have been cast the moment a certain name was spoken out loud. That name was Pentagram. A band that was supposed to be louder and heavier than anything else, but instead became a whisper on a worn out cassette. Their music passed from one true believer to the next. Great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called haunted star mk2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Maggie May by Rod Stewart. And why would I play you that specific slice of Feels like the first time cheese. Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on Halloween 1971. And that was the day that Bobby Liebling decided to form a band that he would call Pentagram and unknowingly unleash a curse he could never shake. On this episode, Doom, demons, drugs, curses, Bobby Liebling and the greatest band that never was, Pentagram. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. The guy in the back of the pawn shop working on the stereo equipment, was he a really young looking old dude or a really old looking young dude? Was he white, black, Latino, Israeli? Was he either perpetually tanned or just plain filthy? And what was with the perm, the Grecian yearning, the sinewy frame and piped wife beater? And was that a gold Star of David or a Pentagram hanging around his neck? Most important, how did this dude look? Cool. So many questions. Rumors have persisted ever since he started working here. The pawn shop gig was the latest in a string of jobs out on the fringes. Bail bondsman, straight PI, off the book, Snatch and Grabman. Word around town was that not only could he fix your turntable, he could play anything. Guitar, drums, sax, and most proficiently, the devil's instrument, the fiddle. The kids who came in the shop fucked with him. He was an easy target. Part Soul Train, part porn star. Stand in. But when he pulled an old cassette tape and popped open the cheap plastic case with a flick of his thumb and shook out the cream colored cassette like he was shaking a Marlboro Red loose from the soft pack he kept in his shirt pocket. Everything changed. At least it did for the two impressionable teenage headbangers who'd wound their way into the back of the pawn shop past the 3006 and the velvet Elvis and past the stuffed jackalope and the Squire Telecaster with the faded STEAL your face sticker peeling from the pick guard to where this dude was hiding in plain sight. He looked at them like he knew they were coming and they looked at him like he had what they were looking for. And he did. They stood there with their Cliff Burton peach fuzz staches and their torn Levi's jackets, ready to have their minds blown in a way that they knew the holier than thou 23 year old down at the record store could never do. And they stared at the dude's stack of tapes with band names handwritten on the spines, Names like Stone Bunny, Space Meat, Wicked angel and Virgin Death. They stared at the letters inked on the knuckles of this dude on his right and left hands. DIEZ irae DAY OF wrath. And they stared at the oily Chevron gas station work shirt that was chaotically tied around this dude's waist with a name patch over the left breast that read teddy. Teddy knew that these two headbangers were weren't here for a busted watch or a faulty piece of stereo equipment. They were there for this. He popped the cassette inside a boombox that was sitting there on the counter. It has to be a cassette, teddy told him. This shit doesn't sound right any other way. A CD is going to give you too much clarity, too much definition. And vinyl? Fuck vinyl. Vinyl's a pain in the balls. Yeah, I see you nodding your head before you even had time to process it. But of course I'm right. Vinyl sucks. Teddy pressed play. The riff came storming from the speakers. Heavy, thunderous, laying the tapest to waste. The boys instinctively slammed their heads up and down. What the Was this Motorhead? No, this is is. It's more like Sabbath. But that definitely wasn't Aussie. On the mic. The guy sounded like an American. Teddy saw the excitement in their eyes, saw that they were having that full body chills reaction to hearing something for the first time that only kids of a certain age and suggestibility are capable of having. Teddy took in their reaction and breathed it in, really tried to absorb it in hopes that it would awaken some sort of long dormant Feeling that he lost possession of years ago. And then he exhaled. Hear that? That's doom in that hiss you're hearing too. That tape hiss. That's the tape breathing. That's. That's how you know it's alive. Never been pressed, never been released. Buried for more than a decade. Only those who know know about this. I know what you're about to ask me. What's the name of the band? Right? Check it out. Teddy just pointed at the gold chain hanging around his neck. Teddy laughed and as he did he arched his head back, stretching out the leathery skin of his neck, and the boys could swear they saw his blue eyes turn red. Nah man. Teddy said this. He pointed at the gold chain again and this time the boys heard a sound like a thunderclap, an explosion, A billboard all fiery red and blazing hot, seared into the back of their skulls. A billboard which read Teddy Pentagram. Teddy kept talking. You haven't heard of the band Pentagram, have you? No one has. But they've been around for a while. Just like their namesake, the Pentagram, the five pointed star that's been around longer than Christ. The Egyptians carved it into their tombs. The Greeks used it as a secret handshake. One Greek in particular called it the mark of perfection. One line, five points. You learned about the golden ratio in school yet? Well anyway, I'm talking about protection, order, virtue. From the tinny speakers, Pentagram's guitarist link lit into a solo so fuzzed out it sounded like the boombox was melting. Now when you flip it upside down the pentagram, all that order and virtue shit, it goes out the window. Teddy then took his gold chain between two nicotine stained fingers and demonstrated what he was talking about. Just like that. You got the devil's pitchfork, Satan's horns. Not protection, damnation. He went on. Now Bobby Liebling didn't know all that. Back in 1971, on Halloween night when he was sitting in the basement of his parents house in Alexandria, Virginia, he was just getting stoned out of his gourd, passing a joint back and forth with his friend Jeff, trying to ignore all the neighborhood kiddies as they went door to door with their pillowcases overflowing with that night's loot. You two need to understand that Bobby Liebling was 18 years old, not much older than you guys. And just like you guys, he was chasing a heavy sound. He was sitting there on the pullout sofa listening to his favorite band, Blue Cheer at an ear blistering volume. You know, summertime blues. I'm not talking about the who, and I don't mean Eddie Cochran neither. Bobby and Jeff wanted to start their own band. And their one guiding principle was that they could be louder and heavier than Blue Cheer, which wasn't exactly in the cards for Bobby, seeing as his father worked for Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. They called Bobby Liebling's dad Little Kissinger, swear to fucking God. But while his dad was stamping out his Winstons and ashtrays at the Pentagon, his son Bobby was dropping acid on his tongue. Actually, according to Bobby, he dropped acid directly onto his eyeballs. At the mention of this, the two metal heads shared a glance. Somewhere between horror and fascination. Teddy brought his voice down to a whisper. This was back when LSD was legal. Back when a dropper full of that would blow the cobwebs out of your brain. Your mind would get so warped you'd create people out of whole cloth and have conversations with them. It wasn't long after that that Bobby got himself acquainted with the Needle. My point is, Bobby Liebling was not his old man. Bobby Liebling wasn't born to be a conformist. Suit and tie, shaking hands with the leaders of the free world. Fuck that. Bobby was put on this earth to make a racket, to rattle the minds of others the way that his own mind had been rattled. Now, just exactly how do you do that in the late 1960s and early 70s? You know, you've read the books. You start a fucking rock and roll band. I don't have to tell you this, but when Bobby Liebling started his band, it was facing the same question that every guy who ever picked up a guitar has asked themselves. What am I gonna call my band? What do I. What do I choose? What name conveys how the music I'm going to make sounds? Well, for Bobby, the answer came to him very quickly. It was what all the suburban housewives were scared of at the time. Housewives like his own mother. They were haunted by images of crazy Charlie Manson walking into court with those pinball eyes and with that big X carved into the flesh of his forehead. Suburban moms didn't just know about Manson. They listened to Sammy Davis Jr. Man, they read the Inquirer. They knew about Anton Lavey and his book, the Satanic Bible. It was like their worst nightmares were coming true in this symbol, the pentagram. The one right there on the COVID of Anton lavey's book. Bobby knew that that was the key that unlocked this other dimension. A dimension that the Squares always thought never existed, but was now beginning to break through the fabric of reality as they knew it. This was what Bobby Webling wanted his music to do. Pierce the veil. But again, just like the two of you, Bobby was young at the time. He named his band Pentagram. And when you're young, you think you get the world by the balls. You think that any decision you make can somehow be unmade down the line. If things get the thing about the Pentagram, however, you draw that star one way, you keep the demons out, but you draw it the other way. Well, you let them in.