Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Yo, Elizabeth Dutton in here, Saron Burnett's name and joking
Speaker 2: around McGee.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I was hanging in here with the new
Speaker 3: new intern Rosie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh god, don't don't move quickly in front
Speaker 2: of her.
Speaker 3: No kind of she is.
Speaker 4: She's buddy.
Speaker 3: So I'm glad you're here because that'll distract your a
Speaker 3: little from my hands. So I got a question for you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 4: I do? I do.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of covering some road. I've already covered Pokemon, Pokemon.
Speaker 3: Pokemon, Oh yeah, yeah, Pokemon.
Speaker 4: And I've also talked about Cheetos before.
Speaker 2: Yes you have, I have two of your great lovestional mashup. Hello,
Speaker 2: So there was a Cheeto that looks like Pokemon Charizard
Speaker 2: and yeah, and yeah it looks like Charizard, which I
Speaker 2: suppose it does.
Speaker 4: It's one of those.
Speaker 3: Flaming hot ones flaming hot jar.
Speaker 4: So I guess everyone was like, oh my god, this
Speaker 4: looks like good Pokemon.
Speaker 2: And then this first in Goal Collectibles got a hold
Speaker 2: of it sometime between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: They're being cagy about it. And they they fixed it
Speaker 2: to a customized Pokemon card encapsulated in a clear card
Speaker 2: storage box.
Speaker 3: Oh those are the best kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it you know, it surged in popularity
Speaker 2: on social media platforms in late twenty twenty four. According
Speaker 2: to somebody, oh the auction site anyway, it went up
Speaker 2: for auction.
Speaker 4: It just sold. The bidder bid seventy two thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of money.
Speaker 4: It wasn't And then with the buyer's.
Speaker 2: Premium it goes up to eighty seven and forty dollars
Speaker 2: for a Pokemon Cheeto Cheeto card in a nice collectible case. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that one, I think it came from maybe a
Speaker 2: couple of people, But the one that was forwarded to
Speaker 2: me was from Monica on Instagram.
Speaker 4: So thank you Monica.
Speaker 3: Thanks Monica. Well that's a good one. I'll give you
Speaker 3: that and Monica. But you know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3: I got something for you.
Speaker 4: Please please tell me when you.
Speaker 3: Look like someone famous? Yeah, why not have fun with it?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: It's all fun and games, well right up until you
Speaker 3: decide to get criminally ridiculous.
Speaker 5: Sure is ziggy.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 3: one hundred percent ridiculous. Yeah, I know you feel me
Speaker 3: on that, Elizabeth. You also love a good story like
Speaker 3: me about criminal celebrity lookalikes.
Speaker 4: Correct, Oh, completely.
Speaker 3: Right, they're always fun. Well, boys, howdy do I have
Speaker 3: some fun ones for you today?
Speaker 4: Thank you?
Speaker 3: Well, really, it's anyway you'll see. It's it's a bunch
Speaker 3: of them. But they're all kind of it's simple. They're
Speaker 3: related to well, I don't want to ruin it. First up,
Speaker 3: I want to tell you about a woman who was
Speaker 3: hired to perform in Sorry noam Okay, that's fun. That's
Speaker 3: not common. That's like worth taking a trip right now.
Speaker 3: The woman's name is Trina Johnson Finn, and the story goes.
Speaker 3: Trina was a career backup singer, the kind you find
Speaker 3: in Las Vegas, right, that's where she was working in
Speaker 3: before her adventure in Surry nom Now. Over the years,
Speaker 3: she'd performed like with Barbara streisand as a backup singer.
Speaker 3: She toured with EMPs Hammer for five years.
Speaker 4: Like a singer and a dancer, more.
Speaker 3: Of a backup singer. Okay, now, She had her own
Speaker 3: one woman's show that ran through a cavalcade of song. Right,
Speaker 3: it's a musical history of Las Vegas. It was like
Speaker 3: a tour of the American songbook. She sings songs by
Speaker 3: Gladys Knight and the Pips. He'd cover songs by Tina Turner.
Speaker 3: She had range, right, and apparently she sang a wicked
Speaker 3: proud Mary. Now this is why she gets hired to
Speaker 3: go down to that little country there just north of Brazil.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, Trina was booked by an outfit called Events for Surreyname,
Speaker 3: and it was run by this shady promoter named Angel
Speaker 3: Ventura or on hell Ventura, which totally sounds like a
Speaker 3: made up name, right, it sounds like the kind of
Speaker 3: name you would expect for like, I don't know, professional wrestler.
Speaker 2: All yes, totally Anyway, this cat Ventura.
Speaker 3: He books Trina as the singer for a Tony Braxton
Speaker 3: tribute show. So she flies down for that, except he
Speaker 3: told the crowd it would really be Tony Braxton. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so Tina didn't know the real score, or so she claims. Now,
Speaker 3: she flew down to surreynam When she got there, ready
Speaker 3: to perform, she learns that the audience is expecting Tony Braxton.
Speaker 2: Oh no, break their hearts, Sarah, exactly.
Speaker 3: You feel me now, This poor woman, she's got a
Speaker 3: moment to decide. She's all made up, right, What will
Speaker 3: she do? Would she go out on stage and pretend
Speaker 3: to be Tony Braxton? Or would she keep her integrity
Speaker 3: tell the promoter to go get bent and fly back
Speaker 3: home to the US. I think you know what choice
Speaker 3: she d Trina decided to go out on stage. This
Speaker 3: crowd in Surryna was expecting Tony Braxton. Damn it. She
Speaker 3: was gonna give them Tony Braxton. Problem was they knew
Speaker 3: Tony Braxton because they were fans of Tony Braxton. So
Speaker 3: she goes out there, she takes the stage, she performs
Speaker 3: her set right, her first song is apparently solid, but
Speaker 3: something just ain't right.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm guessing it's not a huge venue.
Speaker 3: Well it's a stadium, but it is. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: like a tiny club. It's like a stadium. So there's
Speaker 3: a little distance between her and the crowd. Yeah, she
Speaker 3: can kind of pull it off. But like Tony Braxton,
Speaker 3: I don't know if she's known for her dance moves.
Speaker 3: It's mostly her voice and her persona.
Speaker 2: And the balaklava I would hope with hope.
Speaker 3: Right. So she's out there and she can see the
Speaker 3: crowd's faces and they do not look like they're into
Speaker 3: this show. Some look confused, others look upset, some are
Speaker 3: just mad. No one's smiling though, right, So Trina tries
Speaker 3: to shake it off. Maybe her second song will win
Speaker 3: them over. So this is when the booze now start
Speaker 3: to rain down on her. Folks. In the first few rows,
Speaker 3: they're shooting daggers with their eyes at her. Trina, though,
Speaker 3: keeps singing she's committed, you know, she's the show's got
Speaker 3: to go on, and she's on now the show, So
Speaker 3: trying like hell, she tries to win over the crowd.
Speaker 3: Then she gets hit with a glass of beer. Oh no,
Speaker 3: it's a plastic Yeah, luckily it's a plastic cup, splashes
Speaker 3: its contents all over her. That's bad. It's also very
Speaker 3: fun for the crowd. So now a glass bottle comes up.
Speaker 3: Oh that's bad. That's yeah, that's worse. Then another plastic glass,
Speaker 3: and then another bottle and another. The crowd is fully
Speaker 3: turned on her, right, so the Trina waves for the
Speaker 3: DJ cut the music. Cut the music, right, he does.
Speaker 3: She turns to the crowd and tells them we're gonna
Speaker 3: stop the show now, which they did that exactly that,
Speaker 3: and Trina cuts out. Not only does she leave the stage,
Speaker 3: she leaves the venue.
Speaker 4: Just who made a promise?
Speaker 3: Exactly Also I forgot to mention, but once she was backstage,
Speaker 3: she looked for the promoter on Hell Ventura, and ode
Speaker 3: On Hell had disappeared. He was gone, right, he got
Speaker 3: the money from the gate and was whooped gone. The
Speaker 3: next day, Trina and her husband they get confronted by
Speaker 3: the local police. They're like, you know, this was straight
Speaker 3: up fraud. You got to give these people their money back.
Speaker 3: They're like, we don't have the money. They get arrested,
Speaker 3: taken to the police station, interrogated. The day after that,
Speaker 3: oh wow, it was definitely. This is like in the
Speaker 3: early two thousand, so it was like an expensive ticket.
Speaker 3: Then the day after they get initially interrogated, they're feeling
Speaker 3: like they're pressing their luck hanging out in Surinam. Once again,
Speaker 3: they do not have the money to make this right. America,
Speaker 3: Las Vegas is essentially right, So yeah, that's in America.
Speaker 3: They trying to make a break for it. They flee
Speaker 3: to the airport. In this desperate attempt to escape Surinam
Speaker 3: right her and her husband, the couple, they reached the
Speaker 3: airport and that's where they're confronted by police. Yet again,
Speaker 3: they're detained at the airport. They don't make it out.
Speaker 3: The promoter Ventura, though he's pulled a full Harry Houdini.
Speaker 3: Cops can't find him. He's gone. He did not go
Speaker 3: to the airport, he went some other way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the police though, since they have training, and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: it's just throw the law look at her, and so
Speaker 3: they do that. Now Trina's on the hook for all
Speaker 3: the sins of on hell. Ventura. Her husband also though,
Speaker 3: because I don't know, he's just her husband, he gets arrested,
Speaker 3: also detained for two weeks. He's locked up. Finally, after
Speaker 3: two weeks are like, we have nothing on this guy.
Speaker 3: So they send him back to America. But meanwhile, in
Speaker 3: that two weeks time, he lost his job because he
Speaker 3: was a realtor and his employer was like, man, we
Speaker 3: don't need a realtor who's like cooling his heels into
Speaker 3: jail and Surinam. Yeah, so he gets back and then
Speaker 3: what's he has to do now is get his wife
Speaker 3: freaked because she's still detained and the authorities have no
Speaker 3: immediate plans to let her go because they do have
Speaker 3: charges on her. So her husband flies back to America
Speaker 3: without her. Once he's home, he begins selling the couple's
Speaker 3: few assets to raise money to fight her case.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, so, Elizabeth, I don't know if you've ever spent
Speaker 3: time in jail, or specifically jail and surinam, but I
Speaker 3: know you don't. I didn't want to put you on
Speaker 3: the spot an embarrassing front of producer Dan. But let
Speaker 3: me tell you it's no country sleigh ride right Anyway,
Speaker 3: Trina caught all kinds of hell when she was locked
Speaker 3: up or calling her time behind bars. I found a
Speaker 3: quote from Trina she explained how a quote, it was
Speaker 3: like being locked up in a very poor country like Jamaica.
Speaker 3: If you can imagine that, it was very nasty, run down.
Speaker 3: The toilet was not working, so it's said, yeah, so
Speaker 3: instead of her proper john, though, Trina was forced to
Speaker 3: use a small metal bucket as her toilet. A bucket, Elizabeth, Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's what I have?
Speaker 3: Really? Is that what that is in your car. Well, see,
Speaker 3: I always wonder where do you empty the bucket? Do
Speaker 3: you throw it out the cell window like you live
Speaker 3: in a medieval castle, or did this someone come around
Speaker 3: with like a honeywagon. You go like empty it twice
Speaker 3: like a day, Like how does that work with the bit.
Speaker 4: In the corner of a Walmart parking lot?
Speaker 3: Not your bucket, fair bucket, their bucket.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I'm gonna guess they throw it out
Speaker 4: the window.
Speaker 3: Okay, the prison or the jail. Well, anyway, back to Trina,
Speaker 3: enough bucket. She also remembered how bleak the living conditions
Speaker 3: were in her cell, and she wanted to talk about that,
Speaker 3: so she focused on the shower. She was very liquid focused,
Speaker 3: so she Trina said, the rooms were just nasty. I
Speaker 3: had an old bed that was extremely hard. You showered
Speaker 3: by catching water coming out of the faucet in a
Speaker 3: bucket and washing down that way.
Speaker 2: Their buckets buckets, and the buckets are multipleower your bucket.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh man, yeah, my shower.
Speaker 4: But I wonder what was the lighting like? Was that
Speaker 4: tough to imagine?
Speaker 3: It was diom So Trina's time in jail seems like
Speaker 3: a rather excessive punishment for pretending to be Tony Braxton.
Speaker 3: But despite what she had, she had to suffer for
Speaker 3: putting on this fake show. Trina tries to survive her
Speaker 3: new life after lock up. Now after she and her husband,
Speaker 3: they keep trying to fight her case, right, so he
Speaker 3: pays for lawyers. She gets herself some local lawyers. She
Speaker 3: is also hoping her story of wrongful incarceration might go
Speaker 3: viral and help her to get free. That did not happen, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: So she's down.
Speaker 4: There because something went wrong there.
Speaker 3: You go, well, worse than that for her, since you know,
Speaker 3: she's not getting viral fame for her suffering, and and
Speaker 3: they started on. No one seems to care about the
Speaker 3: fate of this phony Tony Braxton forre and a half
Speaker 3: months behind bars. Finally, Trina's case goes to trial in
Speaker 3: May of two thousand and nine. That's when a miracle occurs.
Speaker 3: A miracle. Elizabeth, the ever mysterious long presumed disappeared promoter
Speaker 3: on Hell Ventura reappears on the scene. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 3: better than that. He shows up in court. Trina tells it. Quote,
Speaker 3: they said they found him, but I think he just
Speaker 3: turned himself in and had probably paid a lot of
Speaker 3: people off to avoid taking responsibility for this. Well, so
Speaker 3: when paying people off failed, he finally agreed to face
Speaker 3: the music. So back to Trina quote, I don't think
Speaker 3: there's any big man hunt for him, but the prestice
Speaker 3: was generating internationally forced them to take a look at
Speaker 3: the real evidence. And we had a contract specifically stating
Speaker 3: that I was a tribute act. He basically got called
Speaker 3: out and had to turn himself in.
Speaker 2: So where was this contract? Couldes she show the police?
Speaker 3: Apparently I don't ask. I guess maybe he still hasn't
Speaker 3: his BF case and she's like, look at his briethdays
Speaker 3: find the contract. I do not know the details were
Speaker 3: scarce got it? Got it? So once they do have
Speaker 3: this slippery promoter on the witness stand, as I am
Speaker 3: imagining it, he confesses to his part in the fake
Speaker 3: Tony Braxton scam concert, gets convicted, sentenced to two and
Speaker 3: a half years in prison. Wowrin sur on prison with the.
Speaker 2: Buckets of bucket.
Speaker 3: I hope you like buckets, buddy, so is Trina. She
Speaker 3: gets sent home to America, where she returns to Vegas
Speaker 3: and her one woman tour of the American songbook, So
Speaker 3: they're happy ending for her, right, Yeah, Trina, Now I've
Speaker 3: got a much bigger surprise for you, and this one
Speaker 3: that was about to tell you. It's a series of stories,
Speaker 3: but they all involve a very famous man who is
Speaker 3: Snoop Dogg's uncle.
Speaker 4: Is Snoop Dogg's uncle is famous?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's take a little break and after these beautiful,
Speaker 3: beautiful lads we will be back. I'll tell you about
Speaker 3: this famous man who is Snoop Dogg's uncle.
Speaker 6: All right, Elizabeth Zaren do you figure out who Snoop
Speaker 6: Dogg's famous uncle was?
Speaker 3: No, you really don't know? You have any guesses? U? No, Well,
Speaker 3: the stories will be about folks who pretend to be
Speaker 3: Snoop's famous uncle, not actually about Snoop's famous uncle.
Speaker 2: That was it his uncle on his mother's side or
Speaker 2: his father's side.
Speaker 3: I didn't examine his last name, Brotus. I didn't examine
Speaker 3: the actual genealogy. They just both claim each other as
Speaker 3: nephew and uncle.
Speaker 4: Oh was it like play uncle?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I think I think it's real. I don't think it's play.
Speaker 3: I think it's real. I'll give you a hint. His
Speaker 3: name rhymes with cutesy rawlins. What, Yes, Bootsy as in
Speaker 3: Collins Uncle, the Calvin brotus aka Snoop Dogg.
Speaker 4: How in the what I know?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Everything I found that I could find online. It
Speaker 3: could not find like their sestry dot com, but I.
Speaker 2: Found I don't know what you're going to talk about
Speaker 2: ahead of time. I will go on to ancestry dot
Speaker 2: com after this.
Speaker 3: Yeah you should. Yeah, I don't even have it like
Speaker 3: a log in. So bootsy seks to be the word
Speaker 3: bootsy is slang that you use all the time. What
Speaker 3: does bootsy mean to you?
Speaker 2: To me? When I say something is bootsy, it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's a less than high quality.
Speaker 4: It's it's kind of janky.
Speaker 3: Okay, another one, all right, so that's a synonym for bootsy.
Speaker 4: Think you know, uh poor quality? Gross?
Speaker 3: Okay, now we got a definition. Yes, I guess all right,
Speaker 3: Well I feel I feel like whenever you say it,
Speaker 3: I totally get what you mean. But then also I
Speaker 3: obviously think of Bootsy when I hear it, I think
Speaker 3: of Bootsy Collins. So when I say bootsy as in
Speaker 3: Bootsy Collins, what do you picture? What do you imagine?
Speaker 2: I imagine huge platform boots, and like star shaped sunglasses. Yes, Bootsy.
Speaker 3: How about his star based that he nicknamed space.
Speaker 2: Bas Yes, space based?
Speaker 3: Well a little just about Bootsy. He was born William
Speaker 3: Earl aka Bootsy Collins. He was born nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 3: His mama nicknamed him Bootsy. He once asked her, like,
Speaker 3: why did you name your baby boy Bootsy?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Because I imagine like you was. It doesn't sound like
Speaker 3: it's exactly a compliment. His mama told him, and I
Speaker 3: quote because you looked like a Bootsy And he said,
Speaker 3: I left it at that, you know, mama said, So
Speaker 3: Bootsy's Collins. He's He first came to prominence in James
Speaker 3: Brown's band, the JBS. Right now. He played on a
Speaker 3: raft of James Brown's legendary songs. Hey, I'll tell you
Speaker 3: a couple of them. Get up. I feel like being
Speaker 3: a sex machine. He was on super Bad, He's on
Speaker 3: Soul Power. So like right when James is getting funky,
Speaker 3: he's there. He's the one who introduces or helps introduce
Speaker 3: the funk. He gave those tracks. That's super funky. So
Speaker 3: him and his brother Catfish Collins low End. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 3: as you might imagine, working for James Brown was no
Speaker 3: picnic in the park. Her stories, I imagine right now
Speaker 3: it is. Bootsy remembered it in one colorful story about
Speaker 3: his time with the Godfather's Soul. He said, and I quote,
Speaker 3: he treated me like a son, and being out of
Speaker 3: a father this home, I needed that father figure and
Speaker 3: he really played up to it. I mean, good lord.
Speaker 3: Every night after we played a show, he called us
Speaker 3: back to give us a lecture about how horrible we sounded.
Speaker 3: Not on that son. I didn't hear that one. You
Speaker 3: didn't give me the one. He would tell me this
Speaker 3: after every show. One night we knew we wasn't sounding
Speaker 3: really good. We were off, and he called us back
Speaker 3: there and he said, oh, now that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Y'all was on it tonight. You hit the one. My
Speaker 3: brother and I looked at each other like this mother
Speaker 3: has got to be crazy. We knew in all heart
Speaker 3: and soul that we wasn't all on that show. So
Speaker 3: then I started figuring out his game. Man by telling
Speaker 3: me that I wasn't on it, he made me practice
Speaker 3: hort up. So I just absorbed what he said and
Speaker 3: used it in a positive way. So that was about
Speaker 3: how he did it.
Speaker 4: I like that I didn't.
Speaker 2: I needed a father figure, someone who would criticized him needless.
Speaker 3: A real tough, hard hand is what I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: James Brown, like I keep my hands strong. So he
Speaker 3: got this tiny tyrant James Brown, right, who's just like
Speaker 3: a bound muscle of aggression on stage and off right.
Speaker 3: So in the meantime, Bootsy, he's trying to handle the
Speaker 3: stress of dealing with his boss and now he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, newfound and growing fame as a musician, so
Speaker 3: he chooses to self medicate. His medicine of choice was LSD. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's an interesting as Bootsy tells it, LSD was a
Speaker 3: big part of why I left James Brown's band. I
Speaker 3: promise myself I'd never do it during a show, but
Speaker 3: we had a father son relationship, and he pestered me
Speaker 3: so much not to do it that one day I
Speaker 3: just did. My base turned into a snake and I
Speaker 3: can't even remember playing. After he called me in the
Speaker 3: back room as he always did and was explaining how
Speaker 3: terrible I was, even when I wasn't taking LSD. I
Speaker 3: laughed so hard I was on the floor. To him,
Speaker 3: that was very disrespectful. He had his body God throw
Speaker 3: me out. So he's high in LSD and he gets
Speaker 3: thrown out of James.
Speaker 2: Brown's the tech bro micro dos.
Speaker 3: No, he's doing MAXI dosing MAXI do. Yeah, He's like,
Speaker 3: how many he did? He says he did elist every
Speaker 3: day for two years.
Speaker 4: What, yes, Bootsy, I don't think that's healthy.
Speaker 3: No, but it helped him decide it was time to
Speaker 3: move on from James Brown. Okay, Boots it is. It
Speaker 3: helped him to see things in a new way, give
Speaker 3: him new perspectives and insights. He stayed with James bound
Speaker 3: for about a year, but I think it's like eleven months. No,
Speaker 3: he and his brother, Catfish Collins, they split from the band.
Speaker 3: What a great pair of names, right, these are my sons,
Speaker 3: Bootsy and Catfish. So next up the brothers Bootsy and Catfish.
Speaker 3: They joined George Clinton's band, Parliament Funkade. Now that's where
Speaker 3: Bootsy becomes a superstar, right, that's where we think of
Speaker 3: him with the star shaped sunglasses, the yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: the platform heals. So George Clinton, obviously he appreciates all
Speaker 3: the way out there antics in the funky bass of
Speaker 3: Bootsy Collins. So Bootsy stayed with George Clinton in Parliament
Speaker 3: Forkadelic for the rest of the seventies and into the eighties,
Speaker 3: and together they make the funkiness into a cultural revolution.
Speaker 3: So over the years, Bootsy tries on many many personas,
Speaker 3: like there's boots Zilla, right aka quote the world's only
Speaker 3: Ryan Stone rockstar, mon still of a doll. So because
Speaker 3: of course, you know, Bootsy would see himself as an
Speaker 3: alien rock star. Sure has come to Earth to spread
Speaker 3: the gospel of funk. It's all that makes sense, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's right there, Elizabeth. So over the years,
Speaker 3: obviously there are other personas. One that was all mentioned
Speaker 3: was Casper the Funky Ghost. Okay, that's me, Yeah, Bootsy Collins.
Speaker 3: He's always on. He was one of a kind basically, right,
Speaker 3: which makes it super wild that there were a bunch
Speaker 3: of people who tried to impersonate him, like a bunch Yeah,
Speaker 3: they called him almost Bootsies like. Some did it well
Speaker 3: and some were surprisingly successful, others not so much. So
Speaker 3: it started off when Bootsy heard about this one cat
Speaker 3: out there who kind of looked like him, and he
Speaker 3: was charging money to sign autographs at events. Like he
Speaker 3: would go to some small city and he'd find a
Speaker 3: nightclub or a Ants Club and he posts up there.
Speaker 3: Then he'd start to like greet his fans and he'd
Speaker 3: shake some hands and if anyone wanted an autograph, he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that'd be five dollars or whatever.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So his manager, Bootsy Collins manager Archie Ivy recalled quote
Speaker 3: there were Bootsy sightings all over the place where Bootsy
Speaker 3: wasn't So now what was Bootsy's initial response, Well, according
Speaker 3: to Ivy, we just shrugged it off and said, boots
Speaker 3: he's a real star. Now, we didn't take things seriously.
Speaker 2: Well, that is a good point. That shows what a
Speaker 2: star you are.
Speaker 3: That totally people want to be you.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think because he doesn't like if you
Speaker 2: asked me to pick his just plane face with no
Speaker 2: hair out of a lineup.
Speaker 4: I couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: Be very difficult. He usually's wearing a sequin top hat. Yes,
Speaker 3: star shaped sunglasses. You just see a bit of a
Speaker 3: slender black face.
Speaker 2: Yes, So if you have the same build, then yeah,
Speaker 2: you just put the accessories on and yeah, speaking come Bootsy.
Speaker 3: George Clinton tried it on for a weekend.
Speaker 4: It's maybe it's like santy Claus.
Speaker 3: Kind of Bootsy clubs George. As I was saying, George Clinton,
Speaker 3: his bandmate been Parliament falcadelic. He found it all hilarious
Speaker 3: that people wanted to be Bootsy, so you know he
Speaker 3: would he said, and I quote, I thought it was
Speaker 3: funny that someone got away with it that far, right, now,
Speaker 3: George Clinton, he also tried to, as I said, be
Speaker 3: boot become Bootsy, and to see what he could get
Speaker 3: away with. So, as he remembered it, one time he
Speaker 3: was backstage and he tried to make some young woman
Speaker 3: laugh and he put on the Bootsy costume. And George
Speaker 3: Clinton tells the story and I quote, somebody came to
Speaker 3: see Bootsy and they had never seen him up close.
Speaker 3: And I put on the star glasses and said yeah, Bubba,
Speaker 3: which was one of the trademark catchphrases of his persona
Speaker 3: boot Zilla. So I was with the girl for two
Speaker 3: or three days before Bootsy showed up. I told Bootsy
Speaker 3: I was him. So he says right to boss face, and.
Speaker 2: He's just like, oh wow, okay, No, of.
Speaker 3: Course everybody in the story is kite high.
Speaker 4: Well, it's like.
Speaker 2: When I was little and growing up, we'd be driving
Speaker 2: and if we saw a car exactly like ours, same
Speaker 2: make model color. My mother would say to us, Oh,
Speaker 2: maybe that's us and we just don't know it, And
Speaker 2: that just messed with my.
Speaker 3: Head so badly sent your little head slide right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd be like, oh what if it is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, parallel universe right there. I hope we make it.
Speaker 4: You know, she got there.
Speaker 3: Now speaking about there. But my man Bootsy, as you
Speaker 3: point out right, he was a bit easier to imitate
Speaker 3: because his look is so iconic and so people it's
Speaker 3: largely a costume. People just need the star shape, sunglasses
Speaker 3: and uh. As his manager Ivy points out, it wasn't
Speaker 3: like impersonating prints where he had to worry about height.
Speaker 3: With Bootsy, you make yourself tall with platform boots, put
Speaker 3: on a top hat and the star glasses and a
Speaker 3: lot of shiny stuff. Bootsie's voice is basically a cartoon character,
Speaker 3: so if you had the right phrase and attitude, I
Speaker 3: can see it being pulled off.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, now if you ask Bootsy what he thought about
Speaker 3: all this sudden wave of imitators, he'd tell you, as
Speaker 3: he once told Rolling Stone, and I quote, at first,
Speaker 3: I thought it was funny until some close friends started
Speaker 3: to tell me about how the almost Bootsy started to
Speaker 3: rip people off because he's very positive. It's fun when
Speaker 3: people are having fun. But now they're out there trying
Speaker 3: to like scam in his name. He's like, that ain't
Speaker 3: right now, that ain't Bootsy. So Bootsy did he get
Speaker 3: to have some fun with it? Right? He even offered
Speaker 3: his fans their very own Bootsy costume, like his nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight album he had was called Bootsy Player of
Speaker 3: the Year right. That album included a pair of fake
Speaker 3: star cut cardboard sunglasses. A fan could cut them out
Speaker 3: and become Bootsy. So this obviously led to Bootsy saying
Speaker 3: at the time, it seems that in the past year
Speaker 3: there's been a lot of fake teers running around almost
Speaker 3: Bootsies who's been trying to.
Speaker 2: Be me.
Speaker 3: Bakaders. Yeah, because obviously the funketeers is to play on.
Speaker 3: So Bootsy Uh. The very next year, for his next album,
Speaker 3: This boot is Made for Funking', he had a song
Speaker 3: called she Jam parenthetical almost Bootsy show. So he addressed
Speaker 3: it directly and in the lyrics Bootsy sang and I
Speaker 3: quote without singing, said everyone they were almost Bootsy decked
Speaker 3: out in the staw shaped shades, little boys and girls.
Speaker 3: They were almost Bootsy shining all over the place. So
Speaker 3: there you go. That was some cute fun for Boots.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 3: So anyway, one of the almost Bootsies that we've been
Speaker 3: you know, teasing out, they walked into the headquarters of
Speaker 3: Warner Brothers Records in Burbank. The almost Bootsy he told
Speaker 3: someone in Warner Brothers office, I'm Bootsy and then said
Speaker 3: I'm luck my next royalty check.
Speaker 2: Oh, like it didn't get delivered to the house.
Speaker 4: I guess can I just can I cancel that one?
Speaker 4: Just issue me a new one.
Speaker 3: I was traveling, I thought I just come right to
Speaker 3: the office.
Speaker 4: To make it easier on you.
Speaker 3: So the folks at Warner Brothers, they were used to
Speaker 3: odd behavior from Bootsy, right, Oh yeah, but this was unprofessional, right,
Speaker 3: and a little more than sus So the folks at
Speaker 3: Warner Brothers they call Bootsi's manager, Archie Ivy, and the
Speaker 3: manager when he hears that Bootsy is in a Burbank
Speaker 3: in the Warner Brothers office asking them run me my check.
Speaker 3: He thought it was because Bootsy knew his royalty checks
Speaker 3: were distributed by his company and not by Warner rog
Speaker 3: so yeah, the manager recalled that he'd just spoken with
Speaker 3: the funketeer himself just two days prior in the Cincinnati area.
Speaker 3: Then the reason why this matters, Elizabeth is that Bootsy
Speaker 3: was afraid of flying. He would avoided at all costs. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so he would have driven across country from Ohio to California,
Speaker 3: and that most likely would have taken longer than two days.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Ivy the manager, he had the execs Warner Brothers
Speaker 3: stall this almost Bootsy who was asking for the royalty
Speaker 3: check that the execs from the label. They did as requested.
Speaker 3: They stall him, but they left him alone. Right, So
Speaker 3: then they go they go back to the call. Okay,
Speaker 3: we stalled him, and then they go back to him
Speaker 3: and they're like, wait, where'd he go? Yeah, he took
Speaker 3: off gone almost Bootsy, he bootsied out the door. But
Speaker 3: he was not the last almost Bootsy because there were
Speaker 3: actually there were quite a few. As George Clinton recalled,
Speaker 3: there was this funny thing was how when he wasn't
Speaker 3: on stage, Bootsy was not so outsized. You know a
Speaker 3: lot of performers, but people always imagined he was Bootsy
Speaker 3: twenty four to seven. So Bootsy was actually rather shy.
Speaker 3: So it was kind of the tell if you knew
Speaker 3: boots he was if he's being outsized when he's not
Speaker 3: in a stage setting, it's not Bootsy.
Speaker 2: That's like me, you know. It's like, I'm so hyper
Speaker 2: infrenetic on this show.
Speaker 3: So exactly the place I'm like, Elizabeth climbed down from
Speaker 3: the walls.
Speaker 4: Right, and so we're scaring in the in the world.
Speaker 3: May meet you, and you're just a very calm today.
Speaker 3: Kashmir sweater.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wearing track pants exactly. George Clinton framed it. Bootsy
Speaker 3: was shy. He couldn't have been to all those parties,
Speaker 3: but people wanted to see Bootsy and be with them.
Speaker 3: I went to a few places and people would say,
Speaker 3: I just saw Bootsy. They might have been a couple
Speaker 3: of them. So they're just Bootsies popping up everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just showed up with the glasses, the hat. I'm Bootsy.
Speaker 3: So just imagine a world with a multiplicity of Bootsies, right,
Speaker 3: would that be good? And that's like we need one? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that'd be kind of insane. But rather than picture that, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: I thought I'd take you up run and personal to
Speaker 3: your very own almost bootsy sighting. Yes, Elizabeth, I'd like
Speaker 3: you to close your eyes. I'd like you to picture it. Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: It's the early nineteen eighties and you were seated at
Speaker 3: a corner table in a nightclub in Washington, DC. The
Speaker 3: crowd is a mix of the hip and the hangers on.
Speaker 3: All around you, you can hear men and women's laughter,
Speaker 3: low conversations, glasses, plank lighters, spark to life, to burn,
Speaker 3: the business end of a cigarette. At the moment you're
Speaker 3: seated at the corner table, the coolest people in the room.
Speaker 3: Most of the folks with you are musicians just like you.
Speaker 3: You're the drummer in a local funk band, and at
Speaker 3: the moment you and the rest of your band are
Speaker 3: absolutely giddy because seated with you is the one and
Speaker 3: only Bootsy Collins, the master of the space bass himself.
Speaker 3: He's wearing his signature star shaped sunglasses, his sequin top hat,
Speaker 3: and at the moment he's telling you stories about hanging
Speaker 3: out with the famous folks whose names you know. In
Speaker 3: the music you revere, He's mentioned playing gigs with James
Speaker 3: Brown and the JB. He talks about his time with
Speaker 3: the Atomic dog George Clinton playing in jams with Sly
Speaker 3: but without the family stone. The weird part, though, is
Speaker 3: how Boots he keeps bad mouth and everyone he's ever
Speaker 3: played with or worked for. At the moment, Bootsy is drunk,
Speaker 3: loud talking. Bits of spittle hit your face as he
Speaker 3: tells you how James never understood that Boots he ain't
Speaker 3: from planet Earth. Boots is from planet for Gozella, the
Speaker 3: known home planet of the one and only boots Zella.
Speaker 3: You dig babies now, ignoring the bits of liquor up
Speaker 3: the spittle as he talks, It's fun to take a
Speaker 3: trip down memory lane with Bootsy. Here's someone who seems
Speaker 3: to note just about everyone in music. However, it's still
Speaker 3: a bummer how he has almost nothing good to say
Speaker 3: about any of them. His mood switches on a dome
Speaker 3: with a great flourish Bootsy holds up a credit card
Speaker 3: and waves it around like a composer's baton Boots, he
Speaker 3: says loud enough for all the nightclub waiters to hear,
Speaker 3: We're gonna have fun with this plastic Yeah, now, indeed
Speaker 3: you all do. Another round of drinks is ordered, more
Speaker 3: food is ordered. When the flaming drinks arrive at the table.
Speaker 3: You blow out yours and take the first sip. You
Speaker 3: think to yourself, it sure feels good to party with
Speaker 3: music Royalty. There's a band getting set up on stage
Speaker 3: in this little nightclub. Someone in your party spots this development.
Speaker 3: It says to Bootsy, you should get up and grab
Speaker 3: a base and funk this place up. Bootsy laughs at
Speaker 3: the idea, ha ha, like it's a big joke, but
Speaker 3: you won't let the idea go. You keep nudging Bootsy
Speaker 3: to take the stage into unleash the Bootzilla on this crowd.
Speaker 3: Boots he just keeps laughing.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: But it's like it's the funniest idea is ever heard.
Speaker 3: But it's not that funny anyway. Bootsy turns to you
Speaker 3: and asks, how are you fixed with cash? Now? He
Speaker 3: says he happens to be caught riding low on the greenbacks.
Speaker 3: He says he just has his credit cards on him,
Speaker 3: but he needs some walking around money for Bootsy. Now,
Speaker 3: could you loan boots Is some bucks? The question throws you,
Speaker 3: and you hear yourself say, without thinking, what about your royalties?
Speaker 3: Can't you just like ask for a line of credit
Speaker 3: at a bank against them? Boots He laughs off the idea,
Speaker 3: ha ha ha, same as when it was suggested that
Speaker 3: he should play the bass on stage. Boutsi just says,
Speaker 3: does anyone else in your band have any cash? A
Speaker 3: little something to help out Bootsy? Now you're getting annoyed.
Speaker 3: Why is this rich rock star trying to pull dollars
Speaker 3: out of your band's gas money? So you say to Bootsy,
Speaker 3: aren't you loaded? You're Bootsy? That elicits another big Bootsy laugh.
Speaker 3: Bosieck loves that. Now the master of the space base says,
Speaker 3: if that's right, baby Rom Bootsie Tom next up Planet
Speaker 3: funk Azilla. He excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 3: The band is nearly set up. Now you wonder what
Speaker 3: Bootsy will think of them. But you never find out
Speaker 3: because boots He never comes back to the table. In fact,
Speaker 3: you never see him again. And it turns out, even
Speaker 3: though he waved his card around, he never actually paid
Speaker 3: for all the drinks and the food that he ordered
Speaker 3: for the table, which means you and the band have
Speaker 3: to pick up the tab for Bootsy. So much for
Speaker 3: the band's gas money. Oh man, So, as you might guess,
Speaker 3: that was not the real Bootsy Collins. Did you party
Speaker 3: with in DC, Elizabeth? You spent the night with a
Speaker 3: high dollar almost Bootsy. Did you have fun? Right? There
Speaker 3: was a lot of fun though. Yeah. Sure, Okay, let's
Speaker 3: take a little break and after these messages we'll be
Speaker 3: back with more fake bootsies, Elizabeth. As we've covered Bootsy,
Speaker 3: my man Bootsy, Your man Bootsy a bit outsized, also
Speaker 3: a bit shy. You enjoying the stories of I am
Speaker 3: the dichotomy of the Funkozoa. Now, when Bootsy obviously was
Speaker 3: off stage and feeling shy, he was still Bootsy that interestingly,
Speaker 3: though he would be dressed as the space alien funketeer,
Speaker 3: he would just tone down his behavior and use his
Speaker 3: normal talking voice. He'd be at home wearing his star
Speaker 3: sunglasses and some outrageous shiny outfit. His booking agent actually remember,
Speaker 3: and I found this quote from him. He said, I
Speaker 3: never saw him running around in Bermuda shorts and a
Speaker 3: tank top. He was always Bootsy, So you know, bermudas
Speaker 3: and a tank I don't know what's why he goes
Speaker 3: with right, it's very early eighties, I guess you know,
Speaker 3: you can make sure a lot.
Speaker 2: Of people, well, you can either dress like that or
Speaker 2: you can dress like Bootsy. Those your only choice.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty two, that was the choice, that was
Speaker 3: the law. So as you can probably hear, it's not
Speaker 3: easy to become such a character and not lose kind
Speaker 3: of like a sight of yourself or part of your humanity.
Speaker 3: And the even more extreme cases, which is what Bootsy
Speaker 3: was worried about, was happening to him. Yeah, Plus he's
Speaker 3: taking acid every day for two years. So eventually, by
Speaker 3: the early eighties, after a decade at the Heights of Funk,
Speaker 3: Bootsy decided he was over it. Right as he told
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone, and I quote, I got so tired of
Speaker 3: living up to the Bootsy character. I'd become a so
Speaker 3: called star. I just didn't know how to handle it.
Speaker 3: So it was a real crisis for the residents Space
Speaker 3: Alien And as he later told The Guardian, and I quote,
Speaker 3: I got worn out from being Bootsy going into the eighties,
Speaker 3: I was trying to get away from him. He was
Speaker 3: hitting up the festivals, the stadiums, headlining for one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand people. He was like a monster. The business side
Speaker 3: got really big and ugly because I didn't know what
Speaker 3: I was doing. I was just there to play music
Speaker 3: and the next thing I knew everything had turned around.
Speaker 3: Now this leads to a crisis for Boozy. Right at
Speaker 3: this point, he's still gobbling acid like you know, like
Speaker 3: it's Flintstone vitamins. So this is becoming a problem for him.
Speaker 3: Eventually he has a bad motorcycle accident. Now he may
Speaker 3: or may not have been asked on acid at the time.
Speaker 3: I could not get that straight. But could you imagine
Speaker 3: crashing on a motorcycle on LSD?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: God, right, are you just tripping and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: like I just can't imagine. I was thinking about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it slows down fat and then you just like
Speaker 3: then you feel your skin grab against the pavement and
Speaker 3: then it's like, oh my skin, where did it go?
Speaker 3: So the shame of all this is that while others
Speaker 3: were out having fun being almost to Bootsies, the real
Speaker 3: deal is stuck being Bootsy and he felt like it
Speaker 3: was a private hell to be Bootsy, And unlike the
Speaker 3: almost Bootsies, he can't take off his costume and stop
Speaker 3: being Bootsy because it's now a part of him, right,
Speaker 3: all right, So, but he did step back from the
Speaker 3: character he creates nineteen eighty two, he leaves the party
Speaker 3: life behind. He settles down on the twenty three acre
Speaker 3: ranch back in Ohio near Cincinnati. Yeah, his mama told
Speaker 3: him to take off his top hat and his star
Speaker 3: sunglasses and just be her boy Bootsy again, be himself, right,
Speaker 3: you beaus up, baby boy. Now. Two years later, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, he decided he should probably also stop doing drugs.
Speaker 3: Probably not just the ranch.
Speaker 4: Advisable when you're on the ranch, the drug.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's basically what he came to, he said, and
Speaker 3: I quote, I throwed all my drugs away and I
Speaker 3: stopped taking them. That's when it started to become clear
Speaker 3: what I needed to get back to, which was the music.
Speaker 3: So what meant for him keeping the costume off was
Speaker 3: that Bootsy was seeing walking around his home in the
Speaker 3: bermuda shorts and the tank tops. Eventually worrying what people
Speaker 3: might call normal clothes, right, so he puts the star
Speaker 3: sunglasses of the rhinestone top hats in a spare room.
Speaker 3: But not only that, he locked the door. Oh really,
Speaker 3: he shuts his past self away behind a padlock. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the almost Bootsies don't know this, so they're still going
Speaker 3: around the world being full tailed Bootsies, still claiming to
Speaker 3: be him and one of his new musical collaborators around
Speaker 3: this time, he recalled his early eighties phase Bootsies, and
Speaker 3: he described all these almost Bootsies, and he recalled what
Speaker 3: Bootsy told him. And this is a quote of Bootsy
Speaker 3: from somebody else. Okay, so yeah, those mothers tried to
Speaker 3: impersonate me, but they didn't get too far with it.
Speaker 3: He would laugh about things like that. He was telling
Speaker 3: everyone to be Bootsy, but so when somebody did it,
Speaker 3: he didn't really bother him much. Yeah, but the strangeness
Speaker 3: of the almost Bootsies persisted. Right now, we're into the eighties,
Speaker 3: go go, let me see what I can get away with.
Speaker 3: Sure it starts getting to leaving the uglier right. So,
Speaker 3: one of the almost Bootsies, well, this is probably one
Speaker 3: of the last silly moments. He dropped off some laundry,
Speaker 3: said he claimed to be Bootsie Collins. I guess he
Speaker 3: just wanted laundry. Yeah, he wanted Bootsy to pay for
Speaker 3: his dry cleaning. I guess, like I think he thought
Speaker 3: maybe Bootsy had like an account there. Maybe he saw
Speaker 3: Bootsy go there and he's like, let me just drop
Speaker 3: off my drag.
Speaker 4: Cleaning, the getting like a sparkly pants drike clean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do not know, but it was. It was
Speaker 3: one of the stories mentioned that I thought was interesting.
Speaker 3: Another one that was a kind of ticklish was they
Speaker 3: had a fax machine in their home in Cincinnati because
Speaker 3: it's nineteen eighties, and so someone faxes them and wanted
Speaker 3: to perform a Bootsy check. It was someone in La
Speaker 3: telling people that there was Bootsy Collins, right, So someone
Speaker 3: faxed over to the house his Bootsy home, right, And
Speaker 3: so the almost Bootsy had checked into some luxury hotel
Speaker 3: like I'm imagining, like on Wilshare Boulevard, right, and they
Speaker 3: were demanding a free room and free room service. And
Speaker 3: his wife, who receives this fact, right, she calls back
Speaker 3: to La and it's like, no, he's here at home.
Speaker 3: He is not there, right.
Speaker 2: So meanwhile, when he doesn't sound like the type who's like,
Speaker 2: give me a free room exactly.
Speaker 3: But people don't know, like the person who's working the
Speaker 3: front desk, the this is this is star behavior. They're
Speaker 3: all like this or whatever, and they move along and
Speaker 3: they approve it. So the the guy gets away with it.
Speaker 3: The almost Bootsy gets a free night, a hot meal
Speaker 3: and everything else. And his wife not as amused as
Speaker 3: Bootsy would have abused. She was super annoyed by this
Speaker 3: right because now they're starting to make it's a bad name,
Speaker 3: it's a bad look. The press may get confused. So
Speaker 3: another call comes to the house, this time from Vegas.
Speaker 3: There were reports of yet another almost Bootsy. His wife
Speaker 3: super annoyed with this one because the Vegas Casino hotel
Speaker 3: had complied and given Bootsy the free room the room service.
Speaker 3: Once again bad behavior on his parts. And now she's like,
Speaker 3: that's not Bootsy, it's the impersonator. She's like yelling at people.
Speaker 3: She wants there to be like a Bootsy block. So
Speaker 3: my favorite almost Bootsy was in nineteen eighty eight. They
Speaker 3: went to the New York Music Awards. He went as Bootsy.
Speaker 3: He proceeded to hang out with other celebs, music stars,
Speaker 3: gets in, He parties with Lou Reed, he laughed with
Speaker 3: Paul Simon, he posed with ll Coolja. Yes, there was
Speaker 3: another enclosed encounter with this same almost Bootsy in a
Speaker 3: hotel in Manhattan. A bass player who knew Bootsy heard
Speaker 3: his friend was in the hotel. So he comes over
Speaker 3: to the law and he's like, and he sees Bootsy
Speaker 3: because you're gonna see Bootsy and Apel lobby, right, So
Speaker 3: he goes over to him and he's like, and I quote,
Speaker 3: I knew what Bootsy looked like. I see it all
Speaker 3: the interviews and had the poaches on my wall as
Speaker 3: a kid. He's staying in the same hotel as Miles.
Speaker 3: I was like, God, damn it, it's him. It's got
Speaker 3: to be him. So he goes over to him, right,
Speaker 3: he tries to speak to Bootsy and he sits his hero,
Speaker 3: and his hero is acting funny, not quite like Bootsy.
Speaker 3: This almost Bootsy is like trying to like, oh, is
Speaker 3: there a bathroom around here? Right? So he tries to
Speaker 3: like slip away, and he manages to get out right.
Speaker 3: But that's not the end of this story, because that
Speaker 3: same almost Bootsy tried to like cad your ride with
Speaker 3: the young bass player and his band. He did get
Speaker 3: in the van with him and rode with them all
Speaker 3: the way from New York to Washington, d C. So
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, this is our Washington d C. Almost boots.
Speaker 3: They get to d C, the almost Bootsy and the
Speaker 3: young musicians, they hang out. They're like, hey, he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: what where are y'all staying? Right? So maybe didn't notice
Speaker 3: it at first because there's so stoke that Bootsy wants
Speaker 3: to chill with them, They're like, oh my god, he's
Speaker 3: still wants to hang This is dope. So time passes though,
Speaker 3: they're like, hey, darting to divvy up beds or whatever,
Speaker 3: and people are like, hey, Bootsy, you're gonna go to
Speaker 3: get your own adort? Should we call you a cab?
Speaker 3: The keyboardist in the band, who also meanwhile hero worship Bootsy,
Speaker 3: he recalled how and I quote, I'm thinking, here's this
Speaker 3: established famous musician, what's he doing hanging with us? Why
Speaker 3: aren't we going out to a proper dinner and then
Speaker 3: saying goodbye? Like normal, if you ran into one of
Speaker 3: your heroes, you'd hang out. Who wouldn't turn into a
Speaker 3: twenty four to seven thing? This almost Bootsy much time
Speaker 3: with the hero exactly? Dude? Do you never want to
Speaker 3: meet your heroes, especially when they're not really them, like
Speaker 3: a fake one of your heroes? Even once? Yeah, so
Speaker 3: this almost Bootsy. He wants to talk, of course, industry gossip,
Speaker 3: so he starts running down people. He wants a dish
Speaker 3: about how James Brown screwed him and George Clinton screwed him.
Speaker 3: Then he asked this young band, oh, do you guys
Speaker 3: have a little cash for Bootsy? And then of course
Speaker 3: he disappears, never to be seen again. Yeah, smash cut Annah.
Speaker 3: I'm California at the Annual Music Convention, which is a
Speaker 3: national association of music merchants. Yeah, there's a guy there
Speaker 3: who damn sure look like Bootsy. But not only that,
Speaker 3: he's telling everyone he's Bootsy. So he's going around this
Speaker 3: convention of music basically people selling guitars and basses and drums.
Speaker 3: So this friend of Bootsy's who is there at NOM.
Speaker 3: Here's the people shouting, Oh, Boots, he's here, Boots, He's
Speaker 3: over there. I just saw a Bootsy. He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I didn't know Bootsy was in Anahem. I thought he
Speaker 3: was back in Cincinnati. So, as the friend tells it,
Speaker 3: I would say, what are you talking about. He's in Cincinnati,
Speaker 3: he was here five minutes ago. So the friend tries
Speaker 3: looking all around this Noom and he never catches up
Speaker 3: to the almost Bootsy, but he did find the trail
Speaker 3: of fraud that the almost BOUTSI left bey, Yes, this
Speaker 3: fake funketeer got away with about ten thousand dollars worth
Speaker 3: of even as guitars. Yeah, he had them. He arranged
Speaker 3: for them to be sent to a po box in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: There were also invoices from Limo companies. And then y
Speaker 3: Bootsy's wife finally hears about this one. She's pissed again.
Speaker 3: She tells the story, quote, he got away with a lot,
Speaker 3: from what I'm told, thousands and thousands of dollars negative energy.
Speaker 3: It was very disheartening. Yeah, So despite what his wife said,
Speaker 3: Bootsy still remained a little amused by all the crime
Speaker 3: and hijinks to being done in his name. One former collaborator,
Speaker 3: he was telling the story to Rolling Stone. He said, quote,
Speaker 3: we used to talk about that constantly, and every day
Speaker 3: someone to say we heard he was in this place,
Speaker 3: so he was here, and Boots he was always smiling
Speaker 3: about it. And then when everyone found out that guy
Speaker 3: was pulling a lot of endorsements, meaning he was getting
Speaker 3: a lot of gear, everyone was sinking, Well, maybe that's
Speaker 3: not cool because he couldn't sell that stuff. I don't
Speaker 3: know why that's the line. He could sell that stuff,
Speaker 3: like we don't want him profiting off being almost Bootsy.
Speaker 3: So this same New York based Washington d C Corridor
Speaker 3: Almost Bootsy, Yeah, he would continue to contribute to the
Speaker 3: growing legend of the almost Bootsies around the country. One time,
Speaker 3: another friend of Bootsies was in New York City and
Speaker 3: the friend was convinced, or rather conned by Almost Bootsy.
Speaker 3: This guy was that good, This guy actually knew Bootsy
Speaker 3: hanging out with him.
Speaker 4: Oh, you're kidding.
Speaker 3: The musician, this guy, Freddy Perez, said, quote, you couldn't
Speaker 3: tell the difference in his appearance and the way he spoke.
Speaker 3: He used the same words Bootsy used, even the sound
Speaker 3: of his voice everything. It was wazing. So since he
Speaker 3: was convinced, and since he was a musician, Perez was like, hey,
Speaker 3: Bootsy man, why don't you get up there and slap
Speaker 3: your bass around? So, as he put it, I said,
Speaker 3: I want to hear the funk. So the response was
Speaker 3: he declined, very.
Speaker 2: Strange, ahead and decline.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What was stranger is while he was in DC,
Speaker 3: this New York based Almost Bootsy did sit in with
Speaker 3: a band. There's reports of him going up on stage
Speaker 3: and sitting in, but he didn't play his bass. Instead,
Speaker 3: he just sang because you know, everyone wants to hear
Speaker 3: Bootsy sing. No one's like, hey, sit your bass down
Speaker 3: for this one. Come on, Bootsy, give us those those
Speaker 3: velvety tones. You know, what do you know of the
Speaker 3: American songbook. So this same almost Bootsy he continues rampaging
Speaker 3: up and down the Eastern Seaboard, hopping in vans with
Speaker 3: young bands, playing shows as a singer. So finally the
Speaker 3: real Bootsies team has to spring into like legal action. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they tried to put the kaibosh on this almost Bootsy.
Speaker 3: So this is what the basically the point, This almost
Speaker 3: Bootsy goes to the mattresses right like like they say,
Speaker 3: and the Godfather. So now that they know it's a war,
Speaker 3: so they're trying to get CAGI, so they try to
Speaker 3: catch up to them in a New York and a
Speaker 3: night spot. Almost Bootsy was there. He was celebrating the fans, right,
Speaker 3: and then he's like he was sitting on a complimentary
Speaker 3: champagne that he was getting from the management. The whole bit, right.
Speaker 3: The DJ was there playing his new song because boots
Speaker 3: he had a new song out, and it's just like
Speaker 3: in this dance club, a couple of days later, an
Speaker 3: executive calls that club and it's like, hey, how's Bootsy's
Speaker 3: new song? Doing DJ's like, I got the craziest news
Speaker 3: Bootsy was in the club, and the labels X like what, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's impossible. What are you talking about? Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: So he calls Bootsy's wife. He's like, was Bootsy in
Speaker 3: like whatever club? And she's like, no, he was in
Speaker 3: a whole other stage. Yeah, exactly disconstantly is this Bootsy
Speaker 3: the one eight hundred numbers she's got set up? So
Speaker 3: the exact he calls back to the DJ, right, and
Speaker 3: the DJ's like, well, I got that guy's number. I
Speaker 3: got Bootsy's number because I asked him, right, he was exactly, Oh,
Speaker 3: give it to me. I'd like to talk to Bootsy
Speaker 3: and he's like, of course, right to DJ, he's now.
Speaker 3: The exec gets the number from the DJ, slips it
Speaker 3: to the authorities. The authorities like top up and they
Speaker 3: call it up dead end. There was it was a
Speaker 3: fake number he had slipped them. They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's my number, right. So Bootsi's people at this point
Speaker 3: they're really trying to like close their net on the
Speaker 3: New York and Washington DC area, they find someone who
Speaker 3: knows them or says they know him. They pass a
Speaker 3: message like this is like back channel US Soviet nuclear negotiations. Right,
Speaker 3: So they find somebody who says they know him. They're like, well,
Speaker 3: give them this message. Meet us at this time. They
Speaker 3: arrange a meeting. He shows up. Yes, one of Bootsy's
Speaker 3: people is there, and they took it well, a couple
Speaker 3: of people, and they took it very personally. What the
Speaker 3: almost Bootsy had been up to. Yeah, right, as his
Speaker 3: manager Ivy tells the story, the man from there was
Speaker 3: another man there from Bootsy's team, this guy named Waller, right,
Speaker 3: and so Bill Waller he goes medieval on this almost
Speaker 3: Bootsy like he was. Ivy tells it. Bill was from
Speaker 3: the old school, and I'll just say he used.
Speaker 4: Old school rules.
Speaker 3: Like Bill definitely wasn't Shug Night, but he wasn't anybody
Speaker 3: you'd wanted to take lightly. So Yeah, there was some
Speaker 3: talk later about getting the FBI involved. Rolling Stone even
Speaker 3: submitted a Freedom of Information Act. I found a request
Speaker 3: that they submitted one of their reports on this, and
Speaker 3: the reporters were told by the FBI that the bureau
Speaker 3: could quote, neither confirm nor deny the existence of such records,
Speaker 3: So I'm going with the idea. There was some investigation
Speaker 3: almost now, the reports of his appearances. They started to
Speaker 3: calm down in the late eighties, they seemed to go away,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, nineteen ninety rolls around
Speaker 3: Reggae Sunsplash festival in Jamaica, Elizabeth Bootsy gets spotted bringing
Speaker 3: the funk to Reggae Sunsplash. Yeah. The next year there
Speaker 3: were reports Bootsy was in la He was allegedly trying
Speaker 3: to put on a benefit concert for veteran into the
Speaker 3: First Gulf War. He contacted a British band called The Alarm,
Speaker 3: and he tried to ye right, and so he tried
Speaker 3: to coordinate their participation, and so they grew suspicious though
Speaker 3: when he asked them to pay for his hotel room
Speaker 3: and all his expenses, He's like, you could cover that
Speaker 3: f a Bootsy right grocery. Meanwhile, the Internet is becoming
Speaker 3: not quite common in nineteen ninety, so it existed, but
Speaker 3: it was not like the band couldn't look him up. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: so they couldn't. They didn't know that d Light was
Speaker 3: on tour and Bootsy Collins was with them playing the
Speaker 3: groove is in the heart on international stages. They're like,
Speaker 3: there's no way that's Bootsy trying to put together a
Speaker 3: benefit concert for the veterans of the First Gulf War.
Speaker 4: The Alarm.
Speaker 3: The band they were suspicious about this concert, right, this benefit,
Speaker 3: So they booted the almost Bootsy off their band bus
Speaker 3: right and he leaves with his luggage. And my favorite
Speaker 3: note is he also had with him a very large dog,
Speaker 3: possibly a pet wolf. People in the b and could
Speaker 3: not decide if it was a dogs. So was Van's
Speaker 3: going around with luggage in a possibly Penny's that tight rolls.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the band kicks this almost Bootsy off their bus.
Speaker 3: He angrily yells at them, you will be hearing from
Speaker 3: my lawyers. You will regret this, babies, Elizabeth, that was
Speaker 3: not to occur. That was the last time ever heard
Speaker 3: anyone ever heard from this guy. It was the last
Speaker 3: time anyone ever seems to have heard from almost any
Speaker 3: of the almost Bootsies. The trend passed on. So what's
Speaker 3: that ridiculous takeaway here?
Speaker 2: I know, I thought it was interesting when you were
Speaker 2: saying that Bootsy was like, I just want to play
Speaker 2: the music.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what I was doing in terms of
Speaker 4: the business.
Speaker 2: And that's you know what happens all the time. You
Speaker 2: get musicians who they're not they're artistic souls, they're not
Speaker 2: business minded folks, but yet it becomes a business. They're
Speaker 2: they're not a businessman, they're a business man.
Speaker 3: Well said easy.
Speaker 2: So I just feel for them and I feel for
Speaker 2: him because it's like, that's how they get taken advantage of.
Speaker 3: Okay, they want to focus on the Artaren.
Speaker 4: What's your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 3: That I have never been Bootsy Collins for Halloween?
Speaker 2: Oh? That is a crying shame, right, I mean.
Speaker 3: How did I miss this one? I've got a lot
Speaker 3: of fun costumes here. I've got something to look forward to,
Speaker 3: all right, Well, as we wash away all of the
Speaker 3: funket's here? And yes, can I get a talkback produce
Speaker 3: a d.
Speaker 6: Oh God?
Speaker 3: I love je.
Speaker 7: Saren Elizabeth? Can I just say how amazing you guys
Speaker 7: are one of my favorite podcasts ever. I stumbled on
Speaker 7: you back in the time when you did the Frank
Speaker 7: Sinolfred Junior kidnapping story, and I literally almost wanted to
Speaker 7: pitch my pants. It was so funny and so ridiculous
Speaker 7: in these times. I have to say, I respect everything you've.
Speaker 4: Done in these times. Maybe I love making people pee themselves.
Speaker 3: Yes you do love that, Yes I do. I do well.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that sentiment from her that we do. We
Speaker 4: need to we need to keep it loose these days, guys, we.
Speaker 3: All could use a laugh for oh well. As always.
Speaker 3: You can find us online Ridiculous Crime on the social
Speaker 3: media that's mostly Blue Sky and Instagram these days. From
Speaker 3: what I understand from the interns, we also still have
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime dot Com, our award winning website. I think
Speaker 3: we are now up for a Michelin Award this year.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited to see if our food will take
Speaker 3: us over the line.
Speaker 4: That'd be amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So email us if you'd like it at that
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime at a gmail dot com and please start
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. We will catch you next crime. Ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarin Burnette, produced
Speaker 3: and edited by her own Defunk all star Dave Conston
Speaker 3: and starring Annelie's Rutgers. It You doth Research is by
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Speaker 3: band James Blue and the RC's Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
Speaker 3: The host wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred. Guest Harry,
Speaker 3: makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are boot
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