Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, do you live in Washington, DC? Are you
Speaker 1: sitting around fretting about this upcoming election? Maybe you're even
Speaker 1: working on one of these campaigns. Well, we've got a
Speaker 1: great stress reliever for you, and that's coming out to
Speaker 1: see us on May thirtieth at the Warner Theater for
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know Live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we guarantee zero political jokes, one hundred percent zero
Speaker 2: political jokes if you come out and see us. We're
Speaker 2: gonna be in Medford, mass on May twenty ninth. The
Speaker 2: next night, we'll be in DC on May thirtieth, and
Speaker 2: then the night after that we'll be at our old friend,
Speaker 2: the Town Hall in Manhattan Town, NYC.
Speaker 1: That's right, So check out tickets. You can go to
Speaker 1: stuff youshould Know dot com, you can go to the
Speaker 1: theater websites themselves, avoid those secondary ticket brokers, or check
Speaker 1: out our link tree, right, Josh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, link tree sysk Live.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And when you put us
Speaker 2: all together, well things get pretty great. How's it going, man.
Speaker 3: It's going great.
Speaker 1: I've been listening to The Village People off and on
Speaker 1: all day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same here and what We're supposed to both come in. Sorry, Chuck,
Speaker 2: did you pick this because I cannot imagine that you
Speaker 2: weren't a cute little seven year old Village People fan. True,
Speaker 2: So which one did you identify with the most?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I've told this story before because I posted it on
Speaker 1: Instagram way back when I talked about it. But I
Speaker 1: still have a crayon drawing of the Village People because
Speaker 1: I would sit around and play Cruising the record Cruising okay,
Speaker 1: their third album, their third album, but the one with
Speaker 1: YMCA and I Believe in the Navy and like most
Speaker 1: of their big hits outside of my favorite Village People song,
Speaker 1: which is of course Macho Man Sure such a good song,
Speaker 1: And I would just sit around and listen to Cruising
Speaker 1: and stare at that record cover of those guys you
Speaker 1: know on the Horse and the most Cycle, the motorcycle
Speaker 1: and the Bulldozer, and like I would see them on
Speaker 1: American Bandstand and Solid Gold and the early music videos,
Speaker 1: and I would just I thought they were the coolest,
Speaker 1: most awesome dudes ever in the world. And I would
Speaker 1: sit around and draw crayon pictures of them, and I
Speaker 1: still have one of them.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll pint it on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of always laughed years later that like, who
Speaker 1: knows what my peer parents were thinking. And we'll get
Speaker 1: into the you know, whether or not village people count
Speaker 1: or were in fact a gay band. But I imagine at
Speaker 1: the time, in the early to mid seventies, with Southern
Speaker 1: Baptist parents, they either weren't aware of that or were
Speaker 1: probably pretty like worried about their son when they needn't be,
Speaker 1: because either way it would have been fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well put man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But back in the seventies, in the in the rural,
Speaker 1: not rural, but in a suburban, conservative South, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: sure if they didn't, if they did know what was
Speaker 1: going on, they're probably like, have you seen these Crown pictures?
Speaker 2: Like he drew Little counselor got in Touch.
Speaker 1: I drew literal like pancake boobies on the biker Guy
Speaker 1: because I didn't know how to draw like a bear
Speaker 1: chest correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah hey that worked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyway, I'll either scroll through my Insta or
Speaker 1: maybe I'll figure out how to pin stuff.
Speaker 2: But definitely.
Speaker 1: We're talking about village people technically not the village people.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of one of those things like Eagles
Speaker 1: or hall of Oates, where you just you come to
Speaker 1: be known by that name even though that's not your
Speaker 1: real name.
Speaker 2: Yes, like Edith Burkell and New Bohemians.
Speaker 3: Oh, is that what it is? It's not the New Bohemians.
Speaker 2: Yeah. For some reason, I've always had this memory of
Speaker 2: her correcting David Letterman on Letterman. It's funny in like
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety or something like that. I don't know why
Speaker 2: it stuck with me, but I always she got the
Speaker 2: point across.
Speaker 3: Sure, And Indigo Girls is the other one. They're not
Speaker 3: the Indigo Girls.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't even say that to their face. They
Speaker 2: will they will beat you up.
Speaker 3: Well, if you say Hall of Notes to Daryl Hall,
Speaker 3: he gets pretty salty. He's like, we were.
Speaker 2: Not hall of Oates.
Speaker 3: We never were.
Speaker 2: Oh really what were they?
Speaker 1: Look at the the Hall and now every single album
Speaker 1: it's Darryl holland John Oates.
Speaker 3: They were never Hollan Oates.
Speaker 2: And it just does he really get salty about that
Speaker 2: because they are much much greater things to be upset
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: I've seen him a little salty, but I think it's
Speaker 1: largely because they don't like each other.
Speaker 2: Man, why are you telling me all that?
Speaker 3: Sorry?
Speaker 2: I want Daryl hall and and John Notes to be
Speaker 2: like just the best guys ever.
Speaker 3: You want to be like, it's like wow or dare
Speaker 3: I say, Josh?
Speaker 2: And I'm not participating for the rest of this episode,
Speaker 2: but I have to chew on some stuff.
Speaker 3: All right, let's talk Village People.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually, one of the things that stood out to
Speaker 2: me is this is like the improved version of our
Speaker 2: Milli Vanilli episode, because one thing I didn't realize is
Speaker 2: that the Village People were like a manufactured band and
Speaker 2: they were the brain child I guess collectively yea of
Speaker 2: Jacques morale In Henrie Belolo, who are both Moroccan born
Speaker 2: French Minten Yeah, who I guess separately kind of got
Speaker 2: into the music industry by their own grit and determination
Speaker 2: and didn't really know each other at first. They had
Speaker 2: their own I think, starting in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 2: had their own careers that they were trying to build,
Speaker 2: and eventually in the seventies they came together. Henri Bololo
Speaker 2: was kind of like the brains the producer that kind
Speaker 2: of type. Jacques Moraley was more he was a producer
Speaker 2: as well, but more the hands on, creative type of producer.
Speaker 2: And when they came together, some sparks flew even before
Speaker 2: the village people were ever around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no way to say this without sounding completely
Speaker 1: like kind of stuck up.
Speaker 3: But I've been listening to a lot of French music lately.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, there's I mean, if you're in the
Speaker 1: right mood there, if you look up like eighties sort
Speaker 1: of new wave, but French music, their version, it is
Speaker 1: really really awesome stuff.
Speaker 2: Nice. I will check that out.
Speaker 1: Highly recommended. So yeah, they were, like you said they were,
Speaker 1: had made a name for themselves independently, I believe in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, Belolo set up Can't Stop Productions a
Speaker 1: couple of years later.
Speaker 2: That's a great name, by the way. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just stuck out to me all day.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I remember seeing that little logo like
Speaker 1: Can't Stop the Music. I think that was the name
Speaker 1: of the movie, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't put those two together, actually, don't just know.
Speaker 1: But they eventually met up in the United States and
Speaker 1: their first project and release was a real banger. You know,
Speaker 1: the song Brazil from the nineteen thirties, the one from
Speaker 1: the movie Brazil. They took that and updated it with
Speaker 1: a female trio called the Richie Family as a disco song,
Speaker 1: and it is, like I said, it's a real banger,
Speaker 1: kind of a classic disco song.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it was disco before disco actually existed. So
Speaker 2: a lot of people kind of credit these two is
Speaker 2: really helping lay the foundation for disco. It was that
Speaker 2: that period, right before disco became a thing. So it
Speaker 2: was a weird transition between like, what's the guy's name, Percy.
Speaker 3: Fledge?
Speaker 2: Is it Percy Faith in his orchestra? Okay, the transition
Speaker 2: between Percy Faith and and John Travolta. This is like
Speaker 2: that that slice of music, lots of strings, kind of
Speaker 2: salsa based, lots of like chorus and vocals. It was.
Speaker 2: It actually was up for the nineteen seventy six Grammy
Speaker 2: for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and lost to The Hustle
Speaker 2: if that gets it a cross, So like the Hustle
Speaker 2: is like proto disco. Yeah, so was this version of Brazil.
Speaker 2: And it's right before disco became a thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like on the matter of months though probably.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I would say that, yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 3: Mean losing to the hustle. There's no there's no shame.
Speaker 2: There, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: So they had this pretty good hit with Brazil again.
Speaker 1: I recommend you check it out. It's and listen to
Speaker 1: all these songs are all great. Can't Stop Productions was like,
Speaker 1: all right, listen, we need we you know, back then
Speaker 1: they would just go from thing to thing because it's
Speaker 1: not like you can ride out something like the Richie
Speaker 1: Family forever, so they're always looking for the next new thing.
Speaker 1: In seventy seven, they were hanging out in Greenwich Village,
Speaker 1: New York, which then, as it is now, is a
Speaker 1: very friendly community for especially gay men. Moraley was gay,
Speaker 1: but Belolo was not. But they were hanging out there.
Speaker 1: They were going to disco's, they were going to bars
Speaker 1: and stuff, and they started to see these guys in
Speaker 1: these clubs that were dressed up as these these sort
Speaker 1: of macho American stereo types that they grew up watching
Speaker 1: on you know, American TV and American movies. And this
Speaker 1: is a direct quote from Blolo. Dave is encouraging me
Speaker 1: to read it with a French accent. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about that, but I'll try this from Billboard magazine. We
Speaker 1: saw different types of characters and bars. That's how we
Speaker 1: decided to cleate a group that's will represent different characters
Speaker 1: of the American male. As we had the idea in
Speaker 1: the village, we decided to call the group the Village People.
Speaker 3: Simple.
Speaker 2: That was a great pepulo peza.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was like they saw these guys in bars
Speaker 1: fitting these sort of archetypes or stereotypes of what they
Speaker 1: thought like a macho American man was, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is like a concept right here, right in front
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And actually it's possible that it was one specific guy.
Speaker 2: They saw, Philippe Rose, Felipe Rose, who was known as
Speaker 2: the Indian, who dressed up as a Native American Indian
Speaker 2: around Greenwich Village very flamboyantly because he was a Native
Speaker 2: American his father on his father's side, he was Mescalero, Apache, Lakota,
Speaker 2: and Cherokee, which is like that's the trifecta, and he
Speaker 2: was very proud of it. So he dressed up in
Speaker 2: like moccasins and fringe leather vests and all that kind
Speaker 2: of thing, and they saw him and that in addition
Speaker 2: to going to bars like the mind Shaft, which was
Speaker 2: a BDSM gay club, and then seeing other people kind
Speaker 2: of dress up. That's where they put the whole thing together.
Speaker 2: And Dave made a really good point here that that
Speaker 2: whole concept of dressing people up as like stereotypical American male,
Speaker 2: macho like image images essentially that an American producer probably
Speaker 2: would have been like, that's not a great idea, it's
Speaker 2: kind of lame. But these guys were like looking at
Speaker 2: America from the outside in, and I think, like you
Speaker 2: kind of alluded to, they were exposed to this like
Speaker 2: their whole lives. This is like what they were fed
Speaker 2: through American movies and TV. So to them, they were like,
Speaker 2: this is amazing, what a great idea, Like we want
Speaker 2: to celebrate this American macho male and that's where the
Speaker 2: village people came from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not so sure about that part, but I
Speaker 3: respect Dave's opinion. If you agree with.
Speaker 2: Him, I do agree with him on that.
Speaker 3: I respect you.
Speaker 2: I'm going with Dave on this.
Speaker 1: I bet they're American producers that are like, oh God,
Speaker 1: that's right there in front of my face, can't believe it,
Speaker 1: and think.
Speaker 2: Of Hey, yeah, in hindsight.
Speaker 1: So Moroley started writing songs. You know, like you said,
Speaker 1: they were inspired by Felipe Rose. I don't think you said.
Speaker 1: He was basically kicked out of his house because he
Speaker 1: came out as gay. So he was hanging out in
Speaker 1: the village, working in bars and stuff. The Richie family was,
Speaker 1: you know, they were trying to eke a little, trying
Speaker 1: to ring that thing dry from the Richie family. And
Speaker 1: they were getting a new album together. They needed some
Speaker 1: backup singers, and someone said, hey, there's this guy. He's
Speaker 1: on Broadway right now in the Whiz. His name is
Speaker 1: Victor Willis. The guy can really sing, It's got a
Speaker 1: lot of personality, can dance a little bit. You should
Speaker 1: bring him in here as a backup singer. Roley brought
Speaker 1: him into the studio and it was like, dude, you
Speaker 1: are a star, so we need to get you to
Speaker 1: record these other songs we've written that. There were no
Speaker 1: Village people yet, but in nineteen seventy seven he cut
Speaker 1: their very first disco hit. And you'll see a lot
Speaker 1: of parentheticals because that was the time. But this is
Speaker 1: called San Francisco parentheses.
Speaker 3: You got me another good song.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, Victor Willis was the first. This is long
Speaker 2: before Felipe Rose came along, but after they had seen
Speaker 2: Felipe Rose, right, so they were inspired to create the
Speaker 2: village people. But Victor Willis was really the only village
Speaker 2: person at the time. Everybody else was just studio session
Speaker 2: musicians and singers and stuff like that, right, So that
Speaker 2: worked fine when they cut that first album, which I
Speaker 2: think was like four songs or something like that, and
Speaker 2: they had that hit with San Francisco You Really Got Me.
Speaker 2: And with that hit, they're like, okay, you got Me
Speaker 2: San Francisco. Yeah, which is funny because, as we'll see
Speaker 2: later on, Victor Willis would become a fugitive from the
Speaker 2: law and he would finally be arrested in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: So he was so but he was the village people.
Speaker 2: And now that San Francisco Got Me was a hit,
Speaker 2: like apparently an international club hit, they needed more people,
Speaker 2: and so they started looking for other village people and
Speaker 2: the first one they recruited was Felipe Rose, appropriately enough,
Speaker 2: because apparently he was unknowingly the inspiration for the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Right, Funny enough, they were San Francisco You Got Me
Speaker 1: was big in Australia. As you'll see, that's become a
Speaker 1: recurring thing. It seems like Australians love the Village People. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm curious to hear from them that if you
Speaker 1: look at that first album cover, it is not the
Speaker 1: Village People. And I don't even think Victor Willis is
Speaker 1: on the cover. It's just it's a bunch of guys.
Speaker 1: There is a guy wearing a Native American headdress, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it's Felipe Rose, No, none of them.
Speaker 1: There's a flannel shirt, hard hat guy, and there is
Speaker 1: a biker. But that's it, just those three sort of
Speaker 1: village people that we went on to know and love.
Speaker 1: Everyone else is just a bunch of guys stand around
Speaker 1: in T shirts looking tough with a motorcycle and frame.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, so they had the concept, they just
Speaker 2: didn't have the people yet. So they're slowly starting to
Speaker 2: assemble this. Now they have Victor Willis and Felipe Rose.
Speaker 2: They've got the first two and they actually put an
Speaker 2: ad in the paper, I would guess the Village Voice
Speaker 2: looking for gay men, singers and dancers with mustaches to
Speaker 2: basically audition for the roles in this band, not like
Speaker 2: can you play the bass? Can you? Can you play
Speaker 2: the drums? But do you have a mustache? And are
Speaker 2: you good looking? And a singer and dancer? And they
Speaker 2: got from what I saw like thousands of replies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was They were never a band. It was
Speaker 1: always just supposed to be a singing group, and they did.
Speaker 1: I believe Felipe or I'm sorry. Glenn Hughes, who was
Speaker 1: the biker. He worked at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel collecting tolls,
Speaker 1: saw the ad. By his memory, the ad said seeking
Speaker 1: gay singers and dancers, very good looking and with mustaches.
Speaker 2: Probably wasn't hard to find at that time.
Speaker 1: Well, all his friends were like, Glenn, that's you, buddy,
Speaker 1: Like you need to get in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Glenn Hughes became the village people's leather man,
Speaker 2: which apparently was not a stretch for him. I think
Speaker 2: he was already in the leather at the time, so
Speaker 2: he became the leatherman slash biker, right.
Speaker 3: That's right. He was the third. I think.
Speaker 1: The second one to join up was Alex Briley, who
Speaker 1: came at Victor Willis's recommendation. He was the original sort
Speaker 1: of stereotype for him was he was the athlete, but
Speaker 1: then they changed that pretty quickly to the army guy.
Speaker 1: He was the gi and also the Navy sailor, so
Speaker 1: he kind of crossed over the different arm services, I guess, yes.
Speaker 2: And then another guy who responded to the ad was
Speaker 2: David Hodo. He had just gotten done with the musical
Speaker 2: about the Grand Old Opry and basically went out for
Speaker 2: the cowboy. They're like, nope, you're a construction worker. Through
Speaker 2: and through, a guy named Randy Jones became the cowboy,
Speaker 2: and so you had Victor Willis, Felipe Rose, Alex Bridley,
Speaker 2: Randy Jones, David Hodo, and Glenn Hughes, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: I realized earlier today that I could rattle off the
Speaker 2: names of the original village people now. But that's who
Speaker 2: the village people were at first. And I say we
Speaker 2: take a break, because now we've got this murderer's row
Speaker 2: of mustachioed, generally gay guys ready to hit the disco
Speaker 2: scene and they're about to blow up.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're back. We have our village people assembled.
Speaker 1: I think we failed to mention earlier that Dick Clark
Speaker 1: and American Bandstan American Bandstand. The TV show had already
Speaker 1: sort of reached out after they had San Francisco You
Speaker 1: Got Me as a hit, but they were like, there
Speaker 1: is no village people yet, we can't just you know,
Speaker 1: send one guy out there. So they got these other
Speaker 1: guys together. In December of nineteen seventy seven, they appeared
Speaker 1: for the first time on American Bandstand. I could not,
Speaker 1: for the life of me find this exact performance. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it anywhere. I mean they were on
Speaker 1: quite a few times, but I never saw the one
Speaker 1: from seventy seven somehow. But that was their American you know,
Speaker 1: TV debut and debut of the world when they sang
Speaker 1: San Francisco or I guess lip SYNCD and and the
Speaker 1: song in Hollywood parentheses everybody is a star.
Speaker 2: Yep, And you're right, pentheses where a thing back then?
Speaker 2: I just died in your arms tonight?
Speaker 3: Is that a real one?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I remember we talked about it a few weeks ago,
Speaker 2: that cutting crew song.
Speaker 3: I just didn't know if you fooled me then or not.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's it's legit. Have you been walking around
Speaker 2: wondering that?
Speaker 3: Yeah for three weeks.
Speaker 2: So we're onto your favorite song, Chuck, which I agree.
Speaker 2: I think it's the best Village People song. Macho Man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that was in their second album. So their first album,
Speaker 2: like you said, was called Village People. It came out
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven. Their second album came out in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, and that was the one. It was.
Speaker 2: The album was called Macho Man, and the big single
Speaker 2: from it was called Macho Man as well.
Speaker 3: Is it okay if we read some of the lyrics
Speaker 3: to some of these songs?
Speaker 2: Yes, I saved them too, Oh you did, Okay? I
Speaker 2: think you should sing them.
Speaker 3: Not going to sing them, okay, though it might be
Speaker 3: hard not to.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to read them all because there's
Speaker 1: that intro, that great intro to Macho Man, when they're going,
Speaker 1: you know, body, body, and he's going to want to
Speaker 1: feel my body, such a thrill, my body, want to
Speaker 1: touch my body. That's all that long intro. And then
Speaker 1: here here's some of the words to the verse. Every
Speaker 1: man wants to be a macho Macho man, to have
Speaker 1: the kind of body always in demand, jogging in the mornings,
Speaker 1: go man, go, workouts in the health spa, muscles grow,
Speaker 1: you can tell a macho man. He has a funky walk.
Speaker 1: His Western shirts and leather always looks so boss punky
Speaker 1: with his body. He's a king. Call him mister Ego.
Speaker 1: Dig his chains. Every man ought to be a macho
Speaker 1: macho man to live a life of freedom. MACHOs make
Speaker 1: a stand, have your own lifestyle and ideals, possess the
Speaker 1: strength of confidence. That's the skill.
Speaker 2: But it's so if you dig into that last bit,
Speaker 2: this song goes from essentially just total body worship and
Speaker 2: like working out at the spa and all that stuff
Speaker 2: and however, but he wants to be a macho man
Speaker 2: to essentially like that. The last verse is about gay
Speaker 2: liberation and basically coming out of the closet, it sounds.
Speaker 3: Have your own lifestyles and ideals possessed the strength of confidence. Yeah,
Speaker 3: say exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it really takes like a sudden turn there
Speaker 2: because it's like the most superficial vein song of all time,
Speaker 2: and then it suddenly like kind of is a shout
Speaker 2: out for gay liberation. Yeah, this was like it's kind
Speaker 2: of tough to wrap your head around here in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. Sadly, it's not as tough as it should be,
Speaker 2: but it's still tough to wrap your head around just
Speaker 2: how big of a deal it was for men to
Speaker 2: be like on stage singing songs gay like I'm gay everybody,
Speaker 2: There's just no question about it. I'm a gay person.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was a big, big deal at the time. And
Speaker 2: then to sing about it, yeah, and to sing about
Speaker 2: how that was a good thing that was that was
Speaker 2: really daring and it was really it's neat that they
Speaker 2: did that. Likes it just should not go unnoticed or mentioned,
Speaker 2: and it's hard to overstate what a big deal it was.
Speaker 2: And then it's even harder to overstate how huge of
Speaker 2: a hit Macho Man was for the village people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean little seven year old Chuck in Stone Mountain,
Speaker 1: Georgia dancing around in the shower to that song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it truly reached every corner if that was what
Speaker 1: was going on. They went out on the road, which
Speaker 1: is not something that a lot of disco acts did that.
Speaker 1: Disco wasn't known as a great like sort of live
Speaker 1: touring thing.
Speaker 2: Well, it was, like we talked about in our Disco episode,
Speaker 2: it was a really anonymous type of music, like you
Speaker 2: might have never see a picture of the person who
Speaker 2: who is your favorite you know, who sang your favorite
Speaker 2: song at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, you know, there were some package things here
Speaker 1: and there, but generally going on the road as a
Speaker 1: disco act wasn't a very big thing to do, but
Speaker 1: the Village People did it. From the store, Art and
Speaker 1: Dave dug up the thing from the Washington Post in
Speaker 1: seventy nine that said that their first tour had you know,
Speaker 1: usual stage and equipment problems, but also the group was
Speaker 1: forced to endure all manner of verbal and physical abuse
Speaker 1: from the audience, which means that people were either dragged
Speaker 1: there or went there to you know, to boo to
Speaker 1: boo like a hate watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is crazy. It is crazy, But I mean
Speaker 2: we're talking nineteen seventy nine, you know.
Speaker 1: I guess so, but like to spend your six bucks
Speaker 1: or whatever to like, Hey, We're going to go down
Speaker 1: to Madison Square Garden and boo the Village people. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess that was a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that was a thing, but I think
Speaker 2: more often than not they were just loved. I read
Speaker 2: a quote from Glenn Hughes, the leather Man, who said
Speaker 2: he basically had to beat back women, Yeah, who wanted
Speaker 2: to sleep with him.
Speaker 3: And he's like, he's like, I got a headache.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, I have a headache. So apparently some
Speaker 2: people just didn't get it, some people didn't care, other
Speaker 2: people did get it. It cared one way or another.
Speaker 2: But they were huge. I think for the most part,
Speaker 2: people were either not reading into it or just look
Speaker 2: like purposefully being obtuse and looking past it. I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: but they were enormous. You mentioned Madison Square Garden. They
Speaker 2: definitely played Madison Square Garden. They were in the Macy's
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving Day Parade in nineteen seventy eight. They were huge.
Speaker 2: But if you look back on when they were huge,
Speaker 2: it apparently lasted twenty two months, less than two years,
Speaker 2: but they were at the top of the heap during
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know disco and again, like Josh mentioned,
Speaker 1: we had one of our favorite episodes is on Disco
Speaker 1: many years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 3: It was you know, not a flash in the pan,
Speaker 3: but it was a pretty brief stay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess we should get into this whole
Speaker 1: notion of whether or not village people were you know,
Speaker 1: a quote gay group end quote. Because that's always been
Speaker 1: a question, Like, you know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I believe, you know, people finally started telling me, like,
Speaker 1: you know, those guys are all gay, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was I'm not sure how common knowledge
Speaker 1: because pre Internet, any of the real truth was. Back then,
Speaker 1: Randy Jones, who was the Cowboy, said, we didn't start
Speaker 1: as a gay group, and not everyone in the group
Speaker 1: was gay. That's an incorrect notion. So much of our
Speaker 1: music was played in black, Latin and gay underground clubs,
Speaker 1: though that's where the first Village People album found its
Speaker 1: initial audience. Victor Willis, who you know, to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, kind of was and is the Village People
Speaker 1: because he was the super, super talented Broadway guy. He
Speaker 1: was the guy that co wrote a lot of their
Speaker 1: big songs. Was not just sort of a backup singer.
Speaker 2: He was the cop.
Speaker 1: He was the cop as the front man, and he
Speaker 1: was not gay. He was, in fact, for four years
Speaker 1: married to Felicia at the time, Felicia airs Allen, who
Speaker 1: would later become Felicia Rashad, the wife on The Cosby Show,
Speaker 1: is what she's most well known for. But they were
Speaker 1: in the Whiz together on Broadway and then eventually got
Speaker 1: together to make music with Moraley. I think they got
Speaker 1: together to write a concept album for her called Josephine
Speaker 1: Superstar about the life of Josephine Baker, which I haven't heard,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to try and find that.
Speaker 2: If it's in French, it's really going to knock your
Speaker 2: socks off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but so Victor Willis was not gay. He was
Speaker 1: the frontman and lyricist, but like they had songs about
Speaker 1: Fire Island and San Francisco and Key West, Greenwich Village
Speaker 1: and Key West, and if you look at the lyrics,
Speaker 1: like it's pretty clear that like this stuff was either
Speaker 1: coded for gay or just basically like, if you don't
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about, then you're pretty dense.
Speaker 2: But if you were even remotely hip and you read
Speaker 2: some of the contemporary or contemporaneous articles on them, like
Speaker 2: all the journalists wanted to know, like are you gay? Right?
Speaker 2: I read a New Music Express article from like, I
Speaker 2: think nineteen seventy eight, and the guy's asking Randy Jones
Speaker 2: the Cowboys, like are you a gay group? And apparently
Speaker 2: Randy Jones was sick of hearing this at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was barely containing his anger, and he's like, why
Speaker 2: does it matter. He's like, we're not a gay group
Speaker 2: or a disco group. Right. Over time, they definitely evolved
Speaker 2: into a gay group. I think it. I think it
Speaker 2: kind of occurred to them, like what a huge impact
Speaker 2: they were having just by basically being ambassadors of gayness
Speaker 2: to the rest of the world and showing everybody, like,
Speaker 2: you like our music, you know, like us too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe like the gay dude that you work.
Speaker 3: With exactly, And that's what I think.
Speaker 1: Victor Willis says, as the straight lead singer, and this
Speaker 1: is touching on YMCA, which we'll get into, but he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote those lyrics, so technically it's not
Speaker 1: a gay song because I'm not gay and I wrote it,
Speaker 1: but I never had any qualms that it was embraced
Speaker 1: by the gay community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, nothing, there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically.
Speaker 1: So on the other hand, the Hodo the construction worker says,
Speaker 1: I mean, look at us, we were a gay group.
Speaker 1: The song was written to celebrate gay men at the
Speaker 1: YMCA was it, Yes, absolutely, and gay people loved it.
Speaker 1: YMCA was you know, is the song I think Macho
Speaker 1: Man is a much better song, but YMCA is became
Speaker 1: part of the cultural zeitgeist, like forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw somewhere I couldn't find it, but that's
Speaker 2: it's in a time capsule in orbit around Earth right now.
Speaker 2: It was included in like a bunch of songs that
Speaker 2: was sent out into space.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a huge hit. Like that's just yeah,
Speaker 2: it's part of American culture, I guess international culture really.
Speaker 2: But the idea behind it is that Randy Jones the Cowboy,
Speaker 2: when he moved to New York in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: one of the first things he did was join the
Speaker 2: YMCA on West twenty third Street in Manhattan, which became
Speaker 2: the inspiration for song YMCA because he took Jacques Morale
Speaker 2: to the YMCA with him to work out with some
Speaker 2: of his buddies, who apparently were gay adult film stars,
Speaker 2: and Jacques Moraley was just blown away that there was
Speaker 2: this place. Yeah, it's like this secret hidden gay oasis.
Speaker 2: I'm the cheap right, Like it costs almost no money
Speaker 2: to not only like work out there, but get a
Speaker 2: room there.
Speaker 3: You'd stay there at the time, So apparently he.
Speaker 2: Was just starstruck at the whole idea and loved going
Speaker 2: to the YMCA and decided to write a song about it.
Speaker 2: So he wrote the Bones of YMCA, and then Victor
Speaker 2: Willis came in and wrote kind of the rest of it.
Speaker 2: But the whole idea behind YMCA is that it was
Speaker 2: an ode to just the gay experience at YMCA. And
Speaker 2: Victor Willis, though, he wrote a lyric that I hadn't
Speaker 2: noticed until I was listening to it yesterday where he's
Speaker 2: talking about how just he arrived in this new city
Speaker 2: and he was very unhappy about being there. Huh, he said,
Speaker 2: I thought the whole world was so jive. I noticed
Speaker 2: so jive, Like he just didn't like anything. He thought
Speaker 2: the whole world was drive until he discovered the YMCA
Speaker 2: and realized that this place is awesome and amazing, and
Speaker 2: the world in term was pretty amazing too. I had
Speaker 2: never heard that lyric before noticed it, and when I did,
Speaker 2: I was just I just thought that was so great.
Speaker 3: That's a great lyric.
Speaker 1: If you look at the original music video, it has
Speaker 1: a close up shot of the McBurnie YMCA at the
Speaker 1: very beginning there on what's twenty third, and it's basically
Speaker 1: just a video of them dancing in the street outside
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: As far as.
Speaker 1: The the YMCA hand gestures, they did not create that.
Speaker 1: They if you if you look at that video and
Speaker 1: basically any performance of them doing it on the Why,
Speaker 1: like you know, it builds.
Speaker 3: Up, it's funny and they go they.
Speaker 1: Throw their arms up on why. Yeah, And what they're
Speaker 1: doing is they were just kind of throwing their arms
Speaker 1: up in unison as like a dance move, but it
Speaker 1: sort of looked like a why. And as Randy Jones
Speaker 1: tells it, that it was a live performance where some
Speaker 1: of the audience like just started doing the you know,
Speaker 1: the why, and then the MCA and they the audience
Speaker 1: sort of started it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They so they when they threw their arms up,
Speaker 2: the audience mistook that is like the beginning of them
Speaker 2: spelling out why with their arms, and they took it
Speaker 2: from there. And so some kids on American Bandstand are
Speaker 2: the ones who actually came up with the YMCA dance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Hodo said, here's the quote. When I saw
Speaker 1: the movements, I thought, wow, this is so stupid. Then
Speaker 1: everyone in America started doing it, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: this is so brilliant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty awesome, and the YMCA itself apparently, remember
Speaker 2: this is not a time where everybody's like, hey, kay
Speaker 2: is great. The YMCA was like, you can't use our
Speaker 2: name like that, right, it's trademarked, and I guess got
Speaker 2: in touch with Cosablanco Records, which was producing The Village
Speaker 2: People at the time, and it just petered out. It
Speaker 2: just went nowhere. They ultimately decided not to I think
Speaker 2: they kind of concluded it was actually way better press
Speaker 2: to just leave it as is, and that they risk
Speaker 2: getting terrible press for suing the Village People for singing
Speaker 2: how great YMCA is. So yeah, they just left it.
Speaker 1: I think in the movie version, it will be like
Speaker 1: the head of the YMCA is on the phone to
Speaker 1: the record company, and right before he goes to tell
Speaker 1: them that he wants to cease and desist letter drawn up,
Speaker 1: some kid, you know, some low level worker bust in
Speaker 1: the room and goes boss and he comes up with
Speaker 1: the phone memberships are through the roof, and then it
Speaker 1: just you know, never mind, this is all good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a wrong number.
Speaker 1: So before we break, we'll talk quickly about the fact
Speaker 1: that you cannot go to a baseball game anymore. Without
Speaker 1: hearing YMCA like a Major League Baseball game, especially the young,
Speaker 1: especially the Yankees that all started at spring training in Tampa.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if the Yankees are still there, but
Speaker 1: that was their home at least at the time, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six. This did not happen in the seventies.
Speaker 1: It was in the mid nineties. Top of the fifth inning,
Speaker 1: the grounds crew came out to take care of the
Speaker 1: infield like they always do midway through the game, and
Speaker 1: they broke into the YMCA, you know, spelling out those
Speaker 1: letters as the song played, and everybody thought it was
Speaker 1: the best thing ever. And that's how it was born.
Speaker 1: It was transferred to the new Yankee Stadium, and then
Speaker 1: it just became a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You can hear Larry David as Steinbrenner ordering them
Speaker 2: to take their YMCA dancers in the grounds crew. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I saw a video of it from a
Speaker 2: Yankees game and they're just out there doing like the
Speaker 2: raking like normal, and then YMCA's playing like it's just
Speaker 2: playing as a song for the crowd, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, when it gets to the YMCA, they
Speaker 2: just drop their rakes and start dancing and then when
Speaker 2: that's done, they pick up their res and go back
Speaker 2: to work. It's pretty great, did it You want to
Speaker 2: take that break you promised, Let's do it. Okay, Well
Speaker 2: we'll be right back, okay, Chuck. So we've hit Macho Man, Ymca,
Speaker 2: I think it's time for in the Navy, which was
Speaker 2: their last big hit, their last big single. It came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen seventy nine. That was on the album Cruising,
Speaker 2: which I guess YMCA.
Speaker 3: Was as well, right, Yeah, that was the one that
Speaker 3: I had.
Speaker 2: So that was the third album, second album in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight. These guys released two albums in one year.
Speaker 3: I thought it was all three? Was it just two two?
Speaker 2: No, the first one was nineteen seventy seven Macho Man,
Speaker 2: and Cruising came out in nineteen seventy eight, and then
Speaker 2: there was whatever the third of Yeah, I guess it
Speaker 2: was three. There was no there's three singles, four albums,
Speaker 2: so I'm missing an album. But that album came out
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: The fourth one, Yeah, that last album was Go West.
Speaker 2: Yes, which, by the way, I always thought that was
Speaker 2: a pet Shop Boys song because it was on their
Speaker 2: album Vary from the nineties, and I was listening to
Speaker 2: Village People and came across that and was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I've never realized it was a Village People's song.
Speaker 1: Okay, I actually had this album too, now that I'm
Speaker 1: seeing the cover, because it's basically them on a well
Speaker 1: clearly a green screen, but like a tropical island setting,
Speaker 1: and that had In the Navy on it. So I
Speaker 1: think I'm just getting those confused because I had both records.
Speaker 3: Sure, but can we read a little bit of in
Speaker 3: the Navy?
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, here we go, Everybody in the Navy
Speaker 1: by Village People.
Speaker 3: Where you can find.
Speaker 1: Pleasure, search the world for treasure, learn science technology where
Speaker 1: you can begin to make your dreams all come true.
Speaker 1: On the land or on the sea, where you can
Speaker 1: learn to fly, play in sports and skin dive, study oceanography,
Speaker 1: sign up for the big band, or sit in the
Speaker 1: grandstand where your team and others meet. In the Navy
Speaker 1: And that's when it starts that great chorus.
Speaker 2: And then weirdly, at the end of the song, they're
Speaker 2: singing like the in the Navy part over and over again,
Speaker 2: and Victor Willis is, I guess, singing about how he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to join the navy, and at one point
Speaker 2: he goes, but I'm afraid of the water. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: it's hilarious. It's like purposely funny. And that really kind
Speaker 2: of to me captures like what the village people were doing,
Speaker 2: Like they were balancing like really good disco music with
Speaker 2: high camp, right. I mean, these guys were dressed up
Speaker 2: as just macho stereotypes with like like genuinely funny lyrics sometimes,
Speaker 2: and I think that really kind of captured it for me.
Speaker 2: I saw that in that New Music Express article. The
Speaker 2: author said that they were experts at balancing what is
Speaker 2: deft and what is daft?
Speaker 3: Can I read verse two?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh yeah, sorry, I didn't know you were.
Speaker 3: Oh no, that's right.
Speaker 1: I think it works better to split it up to
Speaker 1: people can just fully absorb if you'd like adventure. Don't
Speaker 1: you wait to enter the recruiting office fast. Don't you hesitate.
Speaker 1: There is no need to wait. They're signing up new
Speaker 1: seamen fast. Maybe you're too young to join up today,
Speaker 1: but don't you worry about a thing, for I'm sure
Speaker 1: there will be always a good navy protecting the land
Speaker 1: and sea. And there's another line in the chorus about
Speaker 1: you know you can protect the motherland like it is
Speaker 1: a legit Navy recruitment song. Yeah, so much so that
Speaker 1: the Navy said, you know what, we'd like to actually
Speaker 1: use this for recruitment, and in exchange, we will let
Speaker 1: you film your music video aboard word like, we'll completely
Speaker 1: help you out and not charge you money.
Speaker 3: We'll give you all the.
Speaker 1: Navy semen that you want as background actors and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you can shoot it above aboard our active ship,
Speaker 1: the USS Reasoner. And that's what they did. They said,
Speaker 1: all right, great, we got a lot of production value here.
Speaker 1: You can use it as an official recruitment song.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's just amazing that, Like, that's just crazy,
Speaker 2: but that's what happened. Apparently the Navy, any ship that
Speaker 2: had a closed circuit TV system got that video and
Speaker 2: I guess would play it over and over again, which
Speaker 2: I mean, luckily, it's a good song and it's an
Speaker 2: interesting video.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was at a Dunkin Donuts the other day and
Speaker 2: they had the Super Bowl Ben Affleck Jennifer Lopez commercial
Speaker 2: on loop. Oh boy, and everyone inside we're completely out
Speaker 2: of their minds. It was an awful, awful scene, terrible
Speaker 2: place to.
Speaker 3: Be Yeah, oh man.
Speaker 2: So what I'm saying is I don't think that would
Speaker 2: have happened on board those Navy ships because it was
Speaker 2: a pretty good song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think their they're actual recruitment did like increase,
Speaker 1: supposedly while the song was out and being used. I
Speaker 1: think the American military was maybe like my parents. They
Speaker 1: weren't like, wait a minute, what we what song are
Speaker 1: we using and by what band as active recruitment for
Speaker 1: our US military?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: But you know, I'm glad they were daft enough to
Speaker 3: not recognize that.
Speaker 2: I guess they're right. Well, the other thing about it
Speaker 2: is I didn't see a single kind of gay innuendo
Speaker 2: lyric in that song. It was more just a gay
Speaker 2: group singing about being in the navy, which you know,
Speaker 2: coded for There are plenty of like gay dudes in
Speaker 2: the Navy secretly at the time, and I'm sure still are,
Speaker 2: but I'm sure it's much less secret. So I think
Speaker 2: that's more what it was than it being like a
Speaker 2: gay song. Sure, it was, like you said, a straight up,
Speaker 2: like like promotional song for the Navy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't say in the Navy you can maybe
Speaker 1: meet your next husband.
Speaker 2: Right right, exactly? That got cut.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got cut.
Speaker 2: So that was, like we said, the last big hit.
Speaker 2: It was in nineteen seventy nine. And I alluded earlier.
Speaker 2: I think I just said out right, didn't even allude
Speaker 2: to it. They had a twenty two month run just
Speaker 2: Burned White Phosphorus Hot. During those twenty two months, I
Speaker 2: saw that both Madonna and Michael Jackson opened for them
Speaker 2: while they were on tour during this time. My guess
Speaker 2: would be nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: Wow, Michael Jackson surprises me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he was already like famous from the Jackson Five.
Speaker 2: But I mean that goes to show you just how
Speaker 2: crazy huge the Village people were for a time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is.
Speaker 2: Before Michael Jackson himself was like just the world's biggest star. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it still says quite a bit. And they
Speaker 2: kept it going, they kept trying to go with it,
Speaker 2: and they released a movie, as you do said earlier,
Speaker 2: it's called Can't Stop the Music, Very bad. I can't
Speaker 2: even make it through the trailer. No, it's it's well
Speaker 2: known as like one of the worst movies of all time,
Speaker 2: just a disco fluffball that keeps hitting you in the
Speaker 2: head over and over again. Steve Gutenberg is the star. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is kind of like a fictitious or
Speaker 2: fictionalized version of the story of how the Village People
Speaker 2: came to be. So he plays an americanized, fictionalized version
Speaker 2: of Jacques Morelli. His name is Jack Morrell in it,
Speaker 2: and again he roller skates everywhere and finally puts together
Speaker 2: this group that became the Village People. And it was
Speaker 2: so bad that apparently it inspired the Razzie Awards.
Speaker 1: Right as the story goes, it was helped create the Razzies,
Speaker 1: and the inaugural Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay winner in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty was a modest hit, though I do Australia.
Speaker 2: I think that's where they made just the tiny amount
Speaker 2: of money that they made back, that's where they made it.
Speaker 3: Back, I guess.
Speaker 1: So I would love to hear from some Aussies of
Speaker 1: a certain age that could testify as to whether or not.
Speaker 3: This is true.
Speaker 2: I would love to hear that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we'll find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the guy, one of the guys who
Speaker 2: created the Razzies the Golden Raspberry Awards, which for those
Speaker 2: of you who don't know, it's like for the worst
Speaker 2: movies of the year. They hand these out. He went
Speaker 2: and saw a ninety nine cent double feature of Can't
Speaker 2: Stop the Music in Xana Do and wanted his money back.
Speaker 2: That's how bad he thought that movie with Xanadu was great.
Speaker 2: He clearly was not talking about Xana Do. He must
Speaker 2: have just completely been focused on Can't Stop the Music.
Speaker 3: When was the last time he saw Xana Do?
Speaker 2: Not that long ago? Okay, I love it. It's also
Speaker 2: got a great soundtrack too.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was the time when they were making
Speaker 1: these big sort of movie musical like pop pop movie
Speaker 1: pop music movies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a strange.
Speaker 2: Time, and everyone was on roller skates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, none of them had like were the best,
Speaker 1: like plotted, you know, and they were just were what
Speaker 1: they were, which was can we get someone into the
Speaker 1: movie theater that likes this music?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and roller skates.
Speaker 1: After Disco Village, people did try their hand at new Wave,
Speaker 1: because that's.
Speaker 3: What came next. It did not work out.
Speaker 1: Victor Willis left the band in nineteen seventy nine, and
Speaker 1: this is where the story gets you know, sad. I
Speaker 1: guess sad in one way or just a little confusing
Speaker 1: because Victor Willis, who a lot of people say, like,
Speaker 1: Victor Willis was Village People as the leader, as the
Speaker 1: original singer and songwriter, but he left had many many
Speaker 1: run ins with the law, awful drug problems, many warrants
Speaker 1: out and you know for like illegal firearms and cocaine
Speaker 1: possession and stuff like this kind of over and over
Speaker 1: and over, kept getting second chances from sympathetic judges that
Speaker 1: were like, hey, listen, you know you got a lot
Speaker 1: to offer the world, like can you get yourself clean?
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Ray Simpson Sugar Ray Simpson took over
Speaker 1: his lead singer and like for thirty years and all
Speaker 1: new Village People save Phelipe Rose and Alex Briley as
Speaker 1: the Indian and Gi toured and played sold out cruise
Speaker 1: ships and county fairs like all over the country in
Speaker 1: world for like thirty years without Victor Willis, they would do.
Speaker 2: Two hundred and eighty shows a year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean very successful touring like nostalgia touring group,
Speaker 3: but without Victor Willis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Victor Willis was not very happy about that.
Speaker 2: So he'd been again. You said, he had huge, huge
Speaker 2: self inflicted problems and run ins with the law. He
Speaker 2: was on an episode of America's Most Wanted once because
Speaker 2: he kept skipping bail. I know he At the same time,
Speaker 2: he definitely had and taken advantage of I can't stop
Speaker 2: the music productions. Early on, he'd only gotten less than
Speaker 2: two grand in album even back in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: That wasn't that much money for something that was just
Speaker 2: super megahits. He got one and a half percent of
Speaker 2: Village People royalties for the songs that he co wrote,
Speaker 2: co wrote, like he wrote significant portions of these songs,
Speaker 2: and like you said, to a lot of people, he
Speaker 2: was the village People. So there was a point in
Speaker 2: time where the Village People were playing the San Mateo
Speaker 2: County Fair and a mile away, Victor Willis was in
Speaker 2: the San Mateo County Jail. Probably could hear at least
Speaker 2: a little bit of it from miss Jail's cell, right,
Speaker 2: So it was pretty bad. And apparently the lowest point
Speaker 2: came in two thousand and eight when they got a
Speaker 2: star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I look this up and apparently they've edited out anything,
Speaker 1: because I watched sort of the whole ceremony. But apparently
Speaker 1: Willis was in the crowd in that copy uniform, like
Speaker 1: yelling and screaming and talking about how it was fake
Speaker 1: and caused a disruption. So I don't know if they
Speaker 1: just got him out of there and did the ceremony,
Speaker 1: or if they edited the thing out. But it is
Speaker 1: not in the YouTube video. But what is evident when
Speaker 1: you're watching that YouTube video, no disrespect to these guys,
Speaker 1: but those aren't the village people. No, when you watch
Speaker 1: those guys are like, that's not those aren't the guys.
Speaker 1: You know, there's not the guys I drew in crayon.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like if you see a guy dressed
Speaker 2: like the Incredible Hulk, you're like, that's not the Hulk.
Speaker 2: He represents the spirit of the Hulk, and in the
Speaker 2: same way, these people represented the spirit of the village people.
Speaker 2: They were there to accept the award in honor of
Speaker 2: the village people. I hope they realized that that's what
Speaker 2: they were doing.
Speaker 1: They didn't even mention Willis, so like they were listing
Speaker 1: off names and no one said Victor Willis's name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a lot of sour grapes. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 2: and so Willis actually took can't stop productions to court,
Speaker 2: and in a really rare and usual turn, he he
Speaker 2: won big time. As a matter of fact, they went
Speaker 2: from giving him one point five percent of royalties to
Speaker 2: fifty percent totally. I didn't see did he get back royalties.
Speaker 3: I don't know that. I was really curious about.
Speaker 2: That because he just became probably something close to a
Speaker 2: billionaire overnight if they did, and then he this, this
Speaker 2: is this to me where I was like, I wish
Speaker 2: this hadn't happened. They also gave him full control over
Speaker 2: the Village People like name and likeness, the name of
Speaker 2: the band, the whole intellectual property that was the Village People.
Speaker 3: You feel bad for the other guys, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's so wrong. They kept the thing going for decades.
Speaker 2: And what did he do.
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I mean, he started playing shows as Village People with
Speaker 1: you know, an entirely set of new guys behind him.
Speaker 2: He fired them. He fired some of the original Village People,
Speaker 2: like you said, I think it was Alex Bridley and
Speaker 2: Llebe Rose and Ray. He was not the original, but
Speaker 2: he came in so closely after Victor Willis did. He was,
Speaker 2: for all intents and purposes, an original, but he was the.
Speaker 1: Cop what are you gonna just say, all right now,
Speaker 1: put on the some the GI uniform.
Speaker 2: Sure, and now Alex probably would be like, I'm the GI.
Speaker 2: It probably would have gone back and forth for a
Speaker 2: little while. He could have accommodated them. Instead, he was like,
Speaker 2: you guys are out, and I don't know that they
Speaker 2: had anything to do with the decision to, you know,
Speaker 2: mess over Victor Willis, and yet he took his angst
Speaker 2: and anger out on them, and I thought that that
Speaker 2: was wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know enough of the story to judge
Speaker 1: it because I don't know how they treated him when
Speaker 1: he was down and out, So.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the best way to judge his story.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just reserve my judgment on this one. I
Speaker 1: do think it's a shame that they couldn't get the
Speaker 1: original group back together for at least a show, because
Speaker 1: when I saw the the what I considered the not
Speaker 1: real village people performing online, was like, this isn't right.
Speaker 1: And then when I saw Victor Willis and those guys
Speaker 1: he got together, I was like, well this isn't right either, right.
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, I wanted I wanted all I wanted
Speaker 1: a gang back together. I wanted all my gay friends
Speaker 1: that I gazed upon and drew and crayon. I wanted
Speaker 1: them to reunite.
Speaker 2: I'm with you, you you wouldn't be able to. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Glenn Hughes died of lung cancer and I think two
Speaker 2: thousand or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is he the I believe he's the only one
Speaker 3: that passed.
Speaker 2: Right, I believe so. But both I think on Reebololo
Speaker 2: and Jacques Morelli are both dead. I think Jacques died
Speaker 2: of AIDS sadly, and on Riebololo died in like the
Speaker 2: late two thousand and tens. I think, I'm not sure what,
Speaker 2: but yeah, So there are some village people out there still.
Speaker 2: You can go see him touring. You can see the
Speaker 2: Victor Willis version at the San Diego County Fair on
Speaker 2: July fourth, and if you happen to be in Santiago,
Speaker 2: Chile or Bogatah, Columbia, you can see them in May.
Speaker 2: All right, Okay, so that's your assignment stuff. You should know, Army.
Speaker 2: Go out and see the village people and let us
Speaker 2: know what you think. In the meantime, you can sit
Speaker 2: there and listen to listener mail.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I was just making I was trying to
Speaker 1: verify really quickly if they were all alive, because that's important.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, and I just saw here that and this is
Speaker 1: real time fact, everybody. Alex Briley supposedly that his brother
Speaker 1: was thought to be the falling man from the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven building.
Speaker 2: No way, wow, nos man, that took a very strange
Speaker 2: turn here, that.
Speaker 3: Did take And I believe that you're right. I believe that.
Speaker 1: I believe that Glenn Hughes is the only one who's
Speaker 1: passed away. So the rest of the guys are still
Speaker 1: trying to trying to do stuff, is it. Randy Jones,
Speaker 1: He's He released a song in twenty seventeen that reached
Speaker 1: number forty two on the Billboard Dance Club Song Charts,
Speaker 1: So that's not too bad. Randy Jones was the cowboy, Yeah, cowboy.
Speaker 2: So you never answered which one did you identify with
Speaker 2: the most, or did you identify with them as a group.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like identify as a is a weird
Speaker 1: word because I didn't like identify as and like I wanted,
Speaker 1: I think I'm one of those guys. But I think
Speaker 1: I thought that the biker was the coolest because like
Speaker 1: that leather man that mustache and that chopper, Like, I
Speaker 1: thought that was just the.
Speaker 3: Coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2: Dig those chains.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think definitely the biker, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean that's the one who I drew with a little
Speaker 1: round boobies.
Speaker 2: I always saw them pretty much collectively, but if any
Speaker 2: of them stood out to me, it was probably the
Speaker 2: construction worker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're always a blue collar kind of guy.
Speaker 2: I think it was this sirp a line jean jacket
Speaker 2: that always stood out to me. And then the mirror aviators.
Speaker 3: Those Toledo roots. Oh yeah, the aviators.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, now everybody, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I think, well, I don't have a listener because I
Speaker 1: thought we could just talk a little bit about our
Speaker 1: upcoming live shows. Oh yeah, let's do that as just
Speaker 1: sort of an in show announcement because we are hitting
Speaker 1: the road. This is a very fun show that you
Speaker 1: put together, and we've been getting emails from parents like, hey,
Speaker 1: can my kids come? Kids are always welcome at our shows. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a well it's a kid friendly topic
Speaker 1: in that it's not, you know, not kid friendly. But
Speaker 1: it's not about Barney the Dinosaur, you know.
Speaker 2: It's not terrifying, though, it's pretty funny. If you're cool
Speaker 2: with your kids. Here in the S word occasionally you're fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we have a cussword or two here and there,
Speaker 1: but it's not too bad. But we were going to
Speaker 1: be We're going to be in Medford, mass On May
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, then d C on the thirtieth, and New
Speaker 1: York on the thirty first. Then this summer we're going
Speaker 1: to hit the road in August on the seventh, eighth,
Speaker 1: the ninth to Chicago, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis for the first time.
Speaker 1: Very nice, and then we're going to wind it out
Speaker 1: in September on the fifth and seventh than Durham, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and here in Atlanta. Tickets are moving pretty good in
Speaker 1: most cities, but we really want to make sure this
Speaker 1: first leg gets close to sold out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, we would love that. If you would
Speaker 2: like to come see us, we would love that too.
Speaker 2: And you can get all the info you need. You
Speaker 2: can get links to ticket sites and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff by going to our website stuff you should
Speaker 2: know dot Com, clicking on the tour button, or you
Speaker 2: can also go to our link tree, link Tree slash
Speaker 2: sysk Live and it'll give you all the stuff you
Speaker 2: need to come see us, because again, we would love that, right, Chuck.
Speaker 3: It's a good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And in the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 2: get in touch with this v email, you can send
Speaker 2: it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.