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Alan Cross
Hey, it's Alan. And I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music, early and ad free on Amazon, music included with Prime. If you went on a road trip and you didn't stop for a Big Mac or drop a crispy fry between the car seats or use your McDonald's bag as a placemat, then that wasn't a road trip. It was just a really long drive. Ba da ba ba ba. At participating McDonald's. Make your next move with American Express business Platinum. Earn 5 times Membership Rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels. Hotels booked on amextravel.com and with a welcome offer of 150,000 points after you spend $20,000 on purchases on the card within your first three months of membership, your business can soar to new heights. Terms apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com Business Platinum AmEx Business Platinum, built for business by American Express. Okay, here's a warning right from the outset. This is going to be a weird program. The performers and the music we're going to talk about are famous because, well, it's weird. And the performers are shocking in their behavior. They set out to get our attention, and they did. Some of us appreciated what they were doing, but the vast majority didn't get them at all. They were branded as sick, deviant, sociopathic, psychopathic, and even criminal. Yet all found some measure of fame within certain corners of the rock universe. Their antics may seem tame now, even quaint in a couple of situations, but if we put these images and behaviors in the context of the times, it seemed like the Antichrist musicians were on Earth, ready to lead the young, dancing and singing towards the apocalypse. So if you're listening to this program, please look around and ask yourself this. Won't someone please think of the children? Okay, Is that good enough or was I too much over the top? I don't want to get in any kind of trouble for this, but I know some people are going to freak out. I know. I'm just. It's just insurance to cover my ass and yours. Okay, okay. We'll pick it up from there. This is a look at the weirdest and most shocking rockers of all time. And that should scare the crap out of him. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. Yep, if we're going to do a show on shocking rockers, we might as well start with Marilyn Manson. And yes, we will come back to him. Welcome again, I'm Alan Cross, and this program is all about artists who made it their mission to freak people out. They believe that the purpose of art is to challenge the way people think, to get them to face unpleasant realities, to speak truth, regardless of how disturbing it may be, to be provocative in ways that will shake people out of their safe notions and preconceptions. Then again, some of them just want to see how far they can push people before we say, that's enough, stop it. They just want attention. That's their sole motivation. Now, regardless of what we're talking about, the favored term here is shock rock. In the beginning, all rock and roll was shock rock. These kids and their music inspired by black musicians, their swiveling hips and sneering lips. It was the stuff of Heathens, music of the devil, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard. Shocking, awful stuff sent by Satan to corrupt the youth. Eventually, though, early rock and roll became acceptable mainstream music, and not nearly as shocking as it once was. This gave birth to the idea of using rock music to shock, period. That is, to deliberately do something so outlandish that it was guaranteed to make people recoil in fear and disgust and horror, while also fighting fans who looked on at what they did and thought cool. The grandfather of these sorts of calculations was Screamin Jay Hawkins. He was from Cleveland, adopted by a tribe of Blackfoot Indians, and studied classical music. When he got out of the army after World War II, he became a singer, a very, very theatrical singer. In 1956, he and his band went into the studio to record a sweet ballad called I Put a Spell on youn. But everybody in the band got drunk. It didn't matter. They only had so much time, so they recorded it anyway. Hawkins didn't even remember the session because he blacked out. The result was not a ballad. When it was finished, the famous DJ Alan Freed offered Jay a chance to perform the song live as it was recorded as part of Freed's concert tours. The only catch was that Hawkins had to emerge from a coffin to sing the song. Do it and I'll give you 300 bucks. That was a lot of money back in those days. So that's what Jay did, and that's what he kept doing. He rose out of the coffin in crazy clothes. He had props like snakes. He had a skull on the top of a walking stick, and the skull's name was Henry, by the way. There would be smoke bombs and incantations. Jay screamed and grunted his way to fame, freaking out people along the way with his macabre display of death and voodoo and black magic and whatever else. The song was banned from the radio in some places over complaints that it was too sexual, too evil and too deviant. I can't stand no running around I can't stand. Okay, that sounds a bit cheesy now, but Trust me, in 1956 it was terrifying and fascinating to those who wanted to be shocked. Following Screamin Jay Hawkins was a British singer named Screamin Lord Sutch. His act was similar, except that he took things into the political realm. Sutch was the founder of the official Monster Raving Loony party and ran for British parliament at least 40 times between 1963 and 1997. And that alone was offensive to many in Britain. When he performed live, he often dressed as Jack the Ripper, rising out of a coffin with his knives and daggers and skulls and fake bodies. So shock, horror. His old shtick was to bait the British people with his over the top antics. And they responded just how he'd hoped. His early big single was called Jack the Ripper, which has been covered many times, including by the White Stripes. Now here's a taste of the original. He's got a big black cloak hanging down his back. Well, that's a one big cat I just hate to fight. And now here are the White Stripes screaming lord such shocking until the end. He died on June 16, 1999, when he committed suicide by hanging. He'd suffered from manic depression for many years. As the rock scene grew throughout the 1960s, there were plenty of performers who wanted to see just how far society would let them take things. The who smashed their instruments. A band called the Move made a habit of destroying TV sets on stage. There was Arthur Brown with his crazy makeup and a flaming headpiece. And songs like this from a record entitled the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. I am the God of hell fire and I bring you fire I'll take you to birth. Now that's scary stuff. For 1968, who would dare proclaim themselves as the God of hellfire? Then there was PJ Proby, an American singer who didn't set out to shock anyone. But on two occasions he appeared on the BBC and had his very tight trousers split open on live television. That caused a scandal and saw him banned from British tv. So shocking, but not on purpose. Then we get to Iggy Pop. He was all about pushing boundaries. James Newell Osterberg Jr. Began his music career as a drummer working with a band called the Iguanas. So Iggy Iguanas get it? The blues were his thing. Until he saw the Doors perform in Detroit. He couldn't believe how provocative Jim Morrison was. Now keep in mind that this is 1967. What was provocative then wouldn't get a second look today. Morrison was confrontational. He egged on the audience. He wanted the crowd to react. He wanted them to be angry. And he kept dropping the F bomb from the stage. Nagy thought, I could do that. In fact, I could do more. And he did, with a band that became known as the Stooges, a group fueled by plenty of drugs and plenty of alcohol. First thing that came off was his shirt. He sang with wild abandon over this loud, primal, heavy music. He covered himself in glitter and sometimes peanut butter. He appeared on stage and rubbed raw meat all over his chest. Broken glass from thrown bottles, no problem. He'd just roll in that if the occasion called for him to expose himself, he would. And if he decided he was gonna go after a bunch of big surly bikers in the audience, he did. Iggy was unpredictable and dangerous, not just to himself, but the audience. Iggy was one of the first rock and roll performers to stage dive. Nobody had done that before Iggy. Now, with all the things that Iggy has put himself through, he should be dead a hundred times over. He was that extremely. And in the process, this shock, this energy, this power, this noise. Iggy inspired uncountable musicians to follow his lead when it came to pushing the envelope of rock. So no wonder he's called the godfather of punk. Iggy and the Stooges from 1973 in the title track of a brilliant pre punk album called Ra. At the same time Iggy and the Stooges were doing their thing between 1968 and 1973, two other bands realized that they could probably get famous by pushing the limits of good taste and proper behavior as well. The first was Black Sabbath. They liked heavy blues rock and were working at that. In a rehearsal space across the street from a movie theater in Birmingham, England, one day they noticed that the cinema was playing a 1963 horror movie entitled Black Sabbath. Bass player Geezer Butler was fascinated by all the people that went in and out of that theater. Isn't it strange that people will spend good money to be scared and shocked? Hang on, wait a second. Why don't we make music that will scare and shock people? That would work. And it did. So the band renamed themselves from Earth to Black Sabbath after the movie and began writing dark, scary sounding songs that dabbled in the occult and death and violence and evil. It was Band Is Horror Film Shocking. The other group was Alice Cooper. Things started slowly for them and it should be noted that the name of the band was Alice Cooper at this point. The first bit of crazy publicity came at the Toronto Rock and Roll revival festival on September 13, 1969. One of the members of Alice Cooper was touring with a chicken. Please don't ask why. It was the 60s. You did things like that back then. Normally this chicken would just sit happily on top of an amp. But for some reason, Vincent Fernier, the singer, believed that as God was his witness, chickens could fly. So he grabbed the chicken and threw it into the crowd. The chicken, of course, then fell into the throng where it was torn to pieces. Now all kinds of stories started circulating that this was an animal sacrifice, that the singer had retrieved the chicken and drank blood from where its head used to be. You know, stuff like that. The truth is that everybody was shocked, including the band. But on the advice of their manager and other musicians close to them, they never denied anything. By 1973, the singer, Vincent Fernier, was now being called Alice Cooper. And story circulated that that name came to him as he was playing with a Ouija board and that he had been contacted by a witch who may or may not have been executed during the Salem witch trials. So we have a man named Alice. He wore makeup, Gothic type eyeliner. He wore leather and sometimes torn up women's clothing. And the songs just got darker and weirder with titles like Dead Babies, Killer Billion Dollar Babies and I Love the Dead. On stage, Alice assumed the role of a violent villain who at some point in the show was subjected to a mock execution. After that was snakes, fake blood, the electric chair, bloody fights and whatever else you can think of. All pretty shocking stuff. But in the process, Alice brought a new sense of theatricality to rock. His work influenced everything from heavy metal to art rock to industrial music. Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath weren't the only artists looking to scare parents with their shock rock. We have to mention KISS at this point. Now granted, they were comic book characters quite literally, and when you compared them to Iggy Sabbath and Alice Cooper. But, you know, they did play up the shock value though. The makeup, the costumes, Gene Simmons tongue and spitting Blood and breathing fire, the over the top stage shows with lots of pyro and the stories the band let spread about themselves. Like for example, that KISS actually stood for Knights in Satan's Service. It was all in good fun, but for a decent segment of the population, very scary, very shocking. Not the kind of decent music people should listen to. So far outside of Biggie Pop, we've about talked, talked about shock Rock having to do with horror, the occult, violence and death. But let's get back to Iggy for just a second. By the early 1970s, there was this idea of shocking for shock's sake. And this is where we can talk about the original punk rockers. British punk rock was all about kicking against the status quo. Down with the class system, down with the monarchy, down with all you normal people in your humdrum lives. British punks felt hopeless about their future and the future of their country. They wanted to shock people out of their complacency. Enter the sex pistols. Until December 1, 1976, they were barely a curiosity, known only to a handful of extreme music fans. But then Freddie Mercury of Queen needed emergency dental surgery. And this meant that the producers of a tea time chat show called Today had a problem. Queen would no longer be able to appear that afternoon. So someone in desperation reached out to the Sex Pistols. Could you appear on the show with Bill Grundy this afternoon? Absolutely. We'll be right there. So a limo was sent and a lot of alcohol was consumed by the time the band and their entourage was brought into the studio. Didn't help that the host of the show, one Bill Grundy, had also been drinking. And the result was one of the most shocking two minutes of British TV ever seen. I am told that that group have received £40,000 from a record company. Doesn't that seem to be slightly opposed to their anti materialistic view of life? More the merrier, really? Oh, yeah. Well, tell me more about it. I don't know. Have you? Yeah, it's all good. Really good lobster. Now, I want to know one thing. What? Are you serious or are you just making me. Trying to make me laugh? Really? Yeah. No, but I mean about what you're doing. Oh, yeah. You are serious. Beethoven, Mozart, Browns have all died. Really? What are you saying, sir? Wonderful people, are they? Oh, yes. They really turn us on. But they do. Well, suppose they turn other people on. That's just their tough. It's What? Nothing. A rude word. Next question. No, no. What was the rude word? Was it really good? Heaven. All right. What about you girls? Behind like your dad, isn't it? Are you, Granddad, are you worried or are you just enjoying yourself? Enjoying myself, are you? Yeah, that's what I thought you were doing. Always wanted to meet you. Did you really? We'll meet afterwards, shall we? You dirty son. You dirty old man. Well, keep going, keep going. Go on, you've got another five seconds. Say something outrageous. Dirty bastard. Go on again. You dirty. What happened to that. Well, that's it for tonight. The other rocker, Abel, and I'm saying nothing else about him, will be back tomorrow. I'll be seeing you soon. I hope I'm not seeing you again from me, though. Good night. The next morning, December 2, 1976, the British tabloids led with the story of the disgusting, shocking punks who swore on tv. The most famous headline was one that appeared in huge type on the front of the Daily Mail and it read, the filth and the fury. Oh, this is perfect, because just five days earlier the Sex Pistols had released their debut single and suddenly everybody wanted to hear it. The Sex Pistols shocking the hell out of Her Majesty's kingdom with their profanity and anarchy. And then there were their fans and other like minded punks. They adopted a wild fashion sense which also included bondage gear, you know, crazy sex stuff, and worse yet, swastikas and other Nazi imagery. Again, this had nothing to do with their actual political beliefs. It was all about creating shock. When we come back, we'll look at where shock rock went in the 80s, and believe me, it went into some really weird and genuinely shocking directions. Close your eyes, exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying. Today I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. Rated T for Teen. Each year, thousands of adults lose their shred. It's an epidemic simply known as shred loss. But it doesn't have to be this way. Because rekindling your shred is as easy as playing the new Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4. With new parks, cross platform multiplayer and sick new game modes, we can put an end to shred loss everywhere. Hit the new Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and show the world that the shred's not dead. Pre order Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and play the Foundry demo. This is a program on the history of shock rock music. Deliberately designed to freak people out with its content, sound and presentation. A lot of extreme stuff came out of the punk rock era on both sides of the Atlantic. And this is where we meet the Plasmatics, a punk rock slash metal band from New York, led by singer Wendy O. Williams, that was formed in 1977. They were willing to do anything to get a rise out of people. Like what? Well, using a chainsaw to cut up stuff on stage, taking a sledgehammer to TV sets, and they liked to blow stuff up whenever they could that would include a car as part of their gig. Williams was easily the most radical female singer of the era. She was originally from Colorado, but ended up in New York performing live sex shows in Times Square and later graduated to performing in porn films. It was when she met a Master of Fine Arts graduate named Rod Swenson that she was persuaded to get into music. And so the Plasmatics were born. They started out at cbgb, the same place that gave us the Ramones and the Talking Heads and Blondie. But because of their antics, they ended up being huge. They could play two shows a night, multiple nights in a row and still have lines down the block. Over the next few years, the Plasmatics achieved a fearsome reputation. Wendy would do all kinds of sexual things on stage. She was once charged with obscenity for appearing at a gig wearing nothing but shaving cream. When the Plasmatics were booked on the old Canadian TV show sctv, she refused to wear a top to salvage everything. The compromise was to have the makeup artist paint her breasts black so you couldn't tell. When the Plasmatics broke up, Wendy did some acting, recorded some solo material, and then retired. Then came a series of suicide attempts, including the time she tried to jam a knife right into her own heart, but it became stuck in her sternum. She finally managed to kill herself in 1998. She walked into the woods near her home in Connecticut, put a bag over her head and used a pistol. Here's Wendy O. Williams in her Silhouac Wow. From 1984. And by the way, this was produced by Gene Simmons of Kiss. It's my life and I'll do what I wanna do what I wanna do what I like it's my life and I'll do what I wanna do what I. Wendy O. Williams, certainly the most shocking female rocker of the 1980s. Okay, back to Marilyn Manson. His real name is Brian Hugh Warner. The stage name came after he moved to Florida and formed a band where each member was required to create something based on a pop culture icon and a serial killer. So in Brian's case, he chose Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Marilyn Manson. Not shocking at all, Right? The band adopted a metal, heavy industrial style. Very, very intense, very heavy. Manson himself got deep into the philosophies of Satanist Aleister Crowley and the writings of the uncompromising Friedrich Nietzsche. He formed a friendship with Anton Lavey, the head of the Church of Satan. Now, Manson is actually a minister in that church, but he doesn't take that seriously, just so you know. And Manson hasn't exactly been kind when it came to Christianity. In concert, he'd sometimes tear pages out of a Bible. So again, shocking. The bigger and more popular Manson became, the more controversial he became. Rumors spread that he was a former child actor gone wrong, that he had a couple of ribs removed so he could pleasure himself, that he was involved in animal sacrifices and the corpse paint, makeup and the weird contact lenses didn't help. He deliberately tried to look as evil as possible. Things peaked after the Columbine school shootings when it was reported that the shooters were wearing Marilyn Manson makeup and T shirts and were big fans of Manson's music. Now, that was not true. It did not happen that way. These were all sensationalist stories that were completely misinformed. But the story stuck and Manson and his music became synonymous with Columbine. There were death threats and canceled shows and a huge, huge blowback, and it nearly ruined him professionally and personally. Manson today continues to do his thing, although he's branched out into art. He paints and acting in both film and television. But people still recoil in fear for Marilyn Manson and everything he, his band, his music and his art. Representing Marilyn Manson and the dope show from the 1998 album Mechanical Animals. I have two more shock rockers and we're going to end up with the craziest, rudest, scariest, most shocking of them all. Stand by. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want, like that dream house or ride, is a great feeling. That's why the State Farm personal price plan can help you save when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. 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They're all in on the joke, and yes, they're into violence, weird humor, spraying blood over the audience, but it's all part of the show. It's satire. They don't take it seriously. And I love the name of the band members too. Odorous Arungus, Johnny Slutman, Steven Sphincter, Nippolus Erectus Beefcake. The Mighty Volvitron. Some may consider the Swedish band Ghost to be a shocking band that stems mostly from their doom metal live performances, and some people are bent out of shape by their satanic appearance and trappings. There's King diamond, the Danish singer. Again, rather satanic and evil. In fact, he claims to subscribe to the satanism espoused by Anton Lavey. He also has a microphone handle that's made out of a human femur and a tibia in the shape of a cross. So nothing to see here, right? Oh, and he has a human skull named Melissa, but Melissa was stolen after a gig in Holland. She's never been found. And then there's Rob Zombie and all his horror heavy music with samples from porn films and B grade movies. And we should take the movies he's directed into account because, well, lots of torture and skinny people alive, necrophilia, stuff like that. But back to porn. One of his band White Zombie's biggest songs was more human than human from a 1995 album entitled Astrocreep 2000 Songs of Love, destruction and other synthetic delusions of the electric head. Seriously? That's the title. There's a substantial amount of moaning in this particular track, and people assume it's from some weird porn movie. It's not. Not really. The sample is taken from a 1982 sci fi movie called Cafe Flesh. After the world is nearly annihilated in a nuclear war, the surviving humans find that they get sick when they try to have sex. The moaning comes from someone participating in a live sex show conducted for the benefit of those humans who can't have sex anymore. Well, now you know. Human Than Human, Rob Zombie and White Zombie with More Human than human from 1996. To end this program on shock rockers, we have to Dive into the career of the most shocking of them all. I gotta be really careful here because everything this guy did is right off the charts. He turned the shock o meter up to 11 and just kept turning. This guy's name is Gigi Allen. First of all, his full name is Jesus Christ Allen. That was his actual birth name, Jesus Christ Allen. Dad was a religious nut. He kept threatening the family with death, and to make sure they knew he was serious, he dug graves in the basement of their log cabin in New Hampshire. That's where you're going to end up if you don't listen to me. Much insane family life ensued. GG failed grade 3. He was bullied throughout school and experimented with cross dressing in high school. After being in a bunch of bands, he turned to super hardcore punk. And they had names like the Texas Nazis, the Cedar Street Sluts, the AIDS Brigade, and the Murder Junkies. Not only was the music intense, but so was he. And this was not an act. He was serious, but everything he said and did. Lot of drugs. He became a pen pal of serial murderer John Wayne Gacy and even visited him in prison. Giggs descended into madness. Within just a minute or two, GG Became infamous for defecating on stage, which he'd sometimes throw at the audience or smear on himself. He stripped naked, got into fights, ended up bloody, lots of self mutilation. So, you know, graphic, graphic, graphic. Sometimes his performances would spill out onto the street. And always, always, always he was threatening suicide. Sometimes he promised that he would take people with him. So no wonder cops were a regular thing at his shows. Promoters often cut the power to the stage because things got so crazy. And in the end, Gigi died of a heroin overdose at the apartment of a friend named, and I'm not making this up, Johnny Puke. Gigi was buried in his leather jacket and jockstrap. The mortician was ordered not to wash anything or otherwise clean up the body. At his funeral, friends filled his mouth with whiskey and drugs. He was buried wearing a set of headphones plugged into a portable cassette player which featured a copy of his 1989 album entitled the Suicide Sessions. And today, his grave in New Hampshire is regularly visited by fans who often use it as a toilet and a drinking spot, thinking that GG Would absolutely love that. So they're paying tribute. Okay, we're gonna stop there. But if you absolutely must get deeper into the life of Gigi, first of all, there's something wrong with you. And second, there's a documentary called Gigi all in the family. It is super weird. It's really hard to find something to play by this guy because it's all so obscene. But we can probably get away with this with a few edits. Gigi was a huge fan of country pioneer Hank Williams and released this song which was inspired by Hank and it's called When I Die. Gigi Allen, the most shocking shock rocker ever. All right, that's it. No more shock. We're finished for this program. Some shock is done for show, but then there's the shock that's done for real. If you did not get enough with this program, let me give you a few more things to explore. There are the Dwarves, a violent hardcore band from Chicago fronted by a dude named he who cannot be named. He tends to wear a mask and a jock strap. And don't be surprised to see both simulated and real sex acts on stage. Rammstein, the German band, very aggressive, very outspoken, very dark. The Mentors out of Seattle. Garage, punk metal and what they alternatively called porno rock or rape rock. And often very racist. Maybe stay away from the Mentors. Even Guar wanted nothing to do with them. That'll give you some idea. And leader El Duce. He died when he was decapitated by a train. Oh, and he claimed that Courtney Love had hired him to kill Kurt Cobain. I mean, just weird people. If you want shock, I mean there's plenty of music to go around. Podcasts of this program are available through Spotify and Apple podcasts and everywhere else you can get on demand audio. There are hundreds available and they're all free. Binging is encouraged. I have a website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com it's always being updated with music news and opinion and recommendations. You should subscribe to the daily newsletter too so you keep on top of things. I'm available on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and all emails should go to alanlancross.ca expect a response. Technical productions by Rob Johnston we'll talk to you next time. I'm Alan Cross. Big brother is back. Let's freakin go. This summer the game gets hotter, the alliances get trickier and the blind sides brutal. This are roller coaster of backstabbing and craziness. New house guests, new twists, same epic drama. Bro, I'm gunning for you. You're my number one target. Who can you trust when everyone's watching? Game on, baby. Big Brother new season Thursday, July 10th on Global Stream on Stack TV.