WEBVTT - "YMCA" by The Village People: Everything You Didn't Know 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.480 Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:12.600 Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:14.960 the show that brings you the secret stories and little 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.560 alone details about your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:22.720 We are your disco DeVos of details, your historians of 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:27.400 Homeronic hymns. To him, you're insensitive portrayals of indigenous people 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:28.080 of ananity. 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:32.000 My name's Jordan run Tag and I'm Alex Heigel. I 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:33.919 was good. I thought you would have liked the indigenous 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.040 and peoples of ananity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:38.120 Well today, in casey I haven't guessed already, we are 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:42.400 talking about a glorious bit of sonic seventies spray Cheese, 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.320 a song that will be a staple of bar Mitzvah's 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.400 retirement parties in the pre nine PM time frame of 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.040 wedding receptions until the end of time. 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:52.320 That is right. 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.720 Today, we are discussing the history of YMCA by the 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.080 Village People, or possibly Village People. I think they're one 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.440 of those bands that as a shoot an article, which 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:03.320 is one of the many things they have in common 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:08.520 with talking heads. The discussion of YMCA has two separate 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:12.200 sides of my professional brand at odds. The longtime music journalist, 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:14.920 then May, feels compelled to say that it's lame, because 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.399 in a certain sense it is, but the long time 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:23.160 events DJ that lurks within me also suggests it's actually 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.920 pretty great because I've seen what YMCA can do on 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:28.160 a dance floor, and folks, let me tell you, it 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:33.000 gets results. It's just so unapologetically goofy and upbeat that 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:35.520 regardless of how much you think you hate it when 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.319 it comes on, you can't help but love it if 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:39.920 you punch it in right here, just as like I 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:51.040 jump scare, yeah, uh here I go. I mean to me, 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:53.600 I love YMCA because it's unique in that it's so 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:57.040 firmly of its time, and yet it's transcended it's time. 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:00.280 It's almost like how the film Grease portrays this of 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:02.760 the fifties that never really existed. That's kind of how 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:06.920 I feel about WHYMCA. It paints this extremely sanitized yet 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:11.000 also innuendo leaden as we'll later discuss cartoon portrait of 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:11.760 the disco era. 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:14.320 I wouldn't want to live there, but I. 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.520 Think we can all agree that it's sometimes a nice 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.359 place to visit. Heigel, I can see you going either 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:21.720 way with this. It has horn charts by Horace Att, 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:23.200 It's got that goal for it. 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:25.480 What do you think of Whymca? 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.600 You know, it's like what do you think of the air? 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:35.240 You know? Like what I struggled with, it's like, you 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:37.880 know American pie, well know, I hate American Well I 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:40.959 was gonna say, yeah, yeah, I don't know, man, It's 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:43.640 like it's just one of those things that's like woven 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:48.440 into the tapestry of American life that it's inextricable and 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:50.800 so bisy. Isn't that weird? Yes? It is. It is. 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:52.880 That's what I'm saying. It's deeply weiz are. It's like 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:58.640 the most successful like queer infiltration of mainstream culture since 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:03.920 like Rock Hudson. I don't know, but he was pretending otherwise. Yeah, 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.919 I mean I insert any number of like deeply closeted 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:13.240 Hollywood people can't say that, say, they'll bull up a 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:18.560 big bleep on that. Yeah yeah. Uh. Kevin Costner before 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:21.040 he before he was just a predator. First he was 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.239 a closet a gay, No no different Kevin Oh yeah, 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:25.919 Kevin Spacey. God, how much would have rule of Kevin 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:28.760 Costner was gay? Just do a series of bleeps and 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:30.800 then me going, God, how much would rule of Kevin 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:33.959 Costner was gay? It would explain his obsession with cowboys. 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:36.720 Oh yeah, I don't know, man, it's weird. I like 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:43.320 I associate this with like a deep cosmic malaise because 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.880 I know that your sister steady state, Well that's true, 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:49.320 but like I know your wedding DJ man, but does 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:53.000 anybody like like when I picture someone doing the YMCA 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:55.560 or being in a room where YMC is playing, it's 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:57.040 just like the most. 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:57.960 There's some self loathing. 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:01.080 Well, it's just like the most performative, listless thing. And like, 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.080 you know, there was a roller rink in central Pennsylvania 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.240 that I used to go to because we didn't have 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:09.240 much to do, and they would play YMCA and it 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:11.720 was just this perfect image of like American life, like 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:15.600 people just circling this big thing, not going anywhere for 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.440 any reason, and just sort of like half acidly making 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.480 letter shapes with their hands. And like, I don't know 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.200 any other pop song with an accompanying dance that really 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.960 does that, Like Makarena at least you could be like, 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:32.719 well it's quasi hispanic. You know. The electric slide is 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:39.320 electric athletic. It's something chacha, real smooth. That's it has. 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:42.000 It has its stupid shuffle. I don't even know that one. 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.000 Oh really that's a I'd be more of a Southern one. 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.640 Yeah, I just so, it's it's so weird, man. It 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:50.240 feels like it's like this national anthem thing that's like 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.640 you just obligated to respond and it says nothing. It's 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:56.520 like ticks something in our brains where we're like, oh, 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.120 time to sing along and do the hand shape thing. 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.560 And I don't really know what other song other than 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:07.960 like the national anthem just elicits such a resigned sense 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.520 of group think, you know, like you can play this 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.520 on death Row and someone would put up the YMCA thing. 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:16.960 It's just like it's just so drilled into our culture 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.280 in a way that I don't think anything else really is. 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:19.719 You know. 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:26.880 That's a phenomenal both visual and insight. Yeah, I mean, 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:28.960 I don't know. I mean you know what I mean. 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:31.240 It could possibly be that it's the dance that requires 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:33.840 the bare minimum. That's true, you know, I mean we 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:35.480 love the bare minimum. 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.520 You gotta know how to do quarter notes, yeah, and 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:43.039 big obvious letter shapes. Although I tend to have a 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:46.200 problem knowing which way the sea goes. Oh sure, yeah, 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.599 is it your see or is it the is it 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.760 like like stage left or no, it's the other way exactly. 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:52.480 Yeah. 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.040 Well, I mean we won't be talking too much about 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.920 the song's musical merits in this episode, but as you said, 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.440 more of the cultural phenomenon, that is, the village people 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.400 are the village people something like that, and you know. 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.000 You laughed, But they moved sixty five. 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:12.840 Million records in the space of like six years, five years. 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:15.320 It's pretty insane. Yeah, I mean part of me is 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:18.760 always just inclined to like ignore anything that happened in 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:21.360 like mid to late seventies in the record industry, maybe 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.800 just the entire seventies for the record industry because it 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.680 was at its like Imperial era. You couldn't you know, 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.400 pirate vinyl and everyone had a nice stereo. Cable wasn't 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:34.720 so much a thing. So it's like, yeah, twenty million then, 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:40.680 but like you know, Disco Duck sold over four million, HAA, well, 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:41.600 I mean that was the thing. 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.840 This group was signed to Cusablanca Records, as we'll talk 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.560 about later, as a novelty band. I mean, the guy 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:50.960 who ran the record label had come from basically running 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.240 a novelty label, and so every act he sign Kiss 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:56.919 was one of them. Donna Summers was one, and that 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:58.440 was Once You Had Loved to Love You, which is 0:06:58.480 --> 0:06:59.880 like nineteen minutes of her grown. 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:04.200 Yeah, but that's genuinely subversive, man like, because that's that 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.600 is that that's moroder Is on program that one. I think, 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.160 so yeah, I mean that's just so like, that's almost 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:15.920 avant garde, right, Kiss, for all of their lack of merits, 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:20.160 except as businessmen like you see, you saw the niche 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.600 that they filled. I just don't know who's clamoring for this. 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.760 I have a thought. I mean, it's it's a fine line. 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:30.559 Let's not do any let's not do any facts. Let's 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.080 just pontificate about YMCA for I don't know an hour 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:36.120 until we both sort of go hoarse and then we 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:37.920 just the whole thing just ends. 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:39.200 Both wander away. 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:41.800 I mean, no, this is sort of the carollary the 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:45.280 spinal tap. There's such a fine line between clever and stupid. 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.600 There's a fine line between novelty and avant garde. I mean, oh, 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:53.200 I was listening to some podcast about the history of 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.680 the recorded music and they mentioned they're coming to take 0:07:57.720 --> 0:07:58.119 me Away. 0:07:58.280 --> 0:07:59.880 Yeah, the novelty song from. 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.560 A and all the sped up tapes and stuff on 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:07.120 that was like actually viewed as fairly groundbreaking. 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.160 Oh yeah, Chipmunk still yeah, yeah, I mean because music 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:14.320 Concrete was like the music Concrete was like the big 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:20.360 thing at the but dumb. Yeah, yeah exactly, And yeah, 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:22.760 I don't know, man, It's just I would love to 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:26.280 be inside that guy's head. Like, I also understand the 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.800 idea of Casablanca Records as like an operating hole. Like 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:32.679 you know, you have Donna Summer, You've got R and 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:38.960 B disco dance crossover, you've got Kiss, big meaty lunkhead rock, 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.480 and they dress weird. Where the do the Village People 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.160 slot in? How did that come into his brain where 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:47.240 he was like, I want to make the gayest band 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:54.400 in the world, and that's it, full stop. Somebody didn't 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:58.560 read ahead on the outline, No, I sure didn't. Well, well, 0:08:58.800 --> 0:08:59.440 we'll get to that. 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:02.720 But I mean, I as you very correctly noted, arguably 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:05.599 the Village People's greatest legacy, not arguably it is the 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:07.439 greatest legacy, is that it helped int a greate gay 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:13.040 culture in the mainstream largely through the use of subcultural stereotypes. 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.200 And this brings us back to our recurring segment of 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:18.040 the show that we like to call two straight white 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:19.480 guys discuss queer culture. 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.120 Hey, I know who Sylvester is. I have some crid. 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:26.440 I mean the village people did play a crucial role 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.760 in integrating gay culture into the mainstream, but don't. 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.439 Take our word for it. Karen Tongsen, a. 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:36.240 Queer studies scholar and associate professor of English and Gender 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:39.400 Studies at the University of Southern California, makes the case 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.280 that the YMCA song, and particularly the video, which was 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.400 filmed on location at the wise famous McBurnie location in 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:49.520 Manhattan's Chelsea District, illustrates the way that queerness has long 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.600 existed in real life and pop culture. She says, a 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.200 lot of queer expression has happened through innuendo. That's essentially 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:59.360 how queer popular culture has existed as something that could 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:00.760 be read in multi sltiple ways. 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:03.280 There's a sense of having to be able to communicate with. 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.360 Each other in plain sight, but without other people figuring 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:10.160 it out. In England, there was a dialect call and 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:11.439 maybe it made its way over here. 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.760 I don't think it did called polari. Are you familiar 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:14.480 with this, I'm not. 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:21.560 It's basically queer Cockney rhyming slang. It was lingo and 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.439 because in the UK homosexuality was outlawed and was illegal 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.400 until nineteen sixty seven, Yeah, it was you'd go to jail, 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:31.680 So there was a whole dialect that evolved to be spoken. 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:33.719 I would generally not be able to tell if it 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.360 were completely invented by like Anthony Burgess, you know, yeah, 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:38.520 oh seriously. Yeah. 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:41.560 No, it's from the Italian polare to talk to the 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.480 Italian verb, and it was used in Britain by actors, 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:49.400 circus and fairground performers, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.559 and sex workers, and particularly among the gay subculture. 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.079 What a beautiful cross section. Yeah, I was gonna say, 0:10:56.040 --> 0:11:00.440 people man at that party, circus folk. No, it's it's 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:01.439 very fascinating. 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:04.840 And you know what Professor Tonkson said earlier about YMCA 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:07.200 being able to be read in multiple ways, this is 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.720 a recurring theme throughout this episode, people insisting that YMCA 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.680 has multiple potential meetings, which was very much not my 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:17.360 perception of this song. I thought it was pretty cut 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:20.520 and dry. But as we'll talk about Victor Willis, who's 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:22.439 the Village People lead singer, and he's the guy who 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:25.040 wrote the lyrics of the song. He is straight, and 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:29.000 he's vehemently denied, with threats of legal action, that he 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:32.280 knowingly wrote a gay anthem, though he says he doesn't 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.439 care that it's been adopted as such. Randy Jones, the 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.880 Cowboy and the Village People, made this point to Spin 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.000 magazine in their oral history of YMCA. He said, I 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:43.400 think you can go into the lyrics of YMCA and 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:45.720 if you're a straight jock who worked out at the why, 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.320 You're gonna perceive it one way. But if you happen 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.319 to be a gay man and have the experience and 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:53.199 perspective of hooking up with each other, that's another way 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.600 it can be perceived, Okay, man. 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:57.640 So that was news to me. I thought it was 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.680 like very clear that it was about one thing. But yeah, well, 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.080 I mean it's once you get the like the roster 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:05.560 of gay stereotypes. I mean I understand that like in 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:09.040 the seventies, like many people did not have exposure to 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.280 full throated gay culture, but like I don't know, man, 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:14.120 like if you're in San Francisco and you saw like 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:17.359 a guy dressed in leather, you'd be like, I recognize 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:19.280 what's going on there. And then the rest of them 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:22.360 are all these macho archetypes, like a macho man if 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:27.680 you will, yes, yes, yes, indeed, very clever. I forgot 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:29.679 they had like more than one hit because it was 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:33.040 about yeah, I was about to positi at one point 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.680 they're like, whither the novelty artist? But like, we don't 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.000 really have those anymore. We have like TikTok flukes, and 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:40.080 some of them are like genuinely talented, and then some 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:42.520 of them are like you know, your Megan Trainers. 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:45.040 I mean I think, I mean, because of the timeline 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:47.720 of TikTok, I would say it kind of went out 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.680 with YouTube viral songs like what did the Fox say type? 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:53.640 Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean it's really just like 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:55.679 you don't even get a viral song anymore. You get 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.440 a viral riff, you get a viral SoundBite, and then 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.840 you got to go play that on a hastily arranged 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.200 stadium tour like poor Steve Lacy did and just screaming zoomers. 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:07.920 You still want to be a musician yeah exactly, dude. 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:09.640 Oh god, that was so funny. By the end of 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:11.840 that tour, people were like holding up their phones and 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:13.960 being like, say how to my mom and he just 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:16.920 flatly goes no and starts paying the next song, like, 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:22.920 uh anyway, yeah, okay, man, let's get cool. You didn't 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.960 know that, like the large buff men so mirrored other 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:32.040 large buff men in your metropolitan area. Yeah, I mean, like, idiot, Like, 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:37.200 what's my dumb ask? Like, I mean, how do you 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:41.240 misinterpret that? Like, no, it's totally straight. I just like 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:45.360 I'm surrounded by like beefy men, uh, dressed as cops 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:48.719 and like leather guys, and you know all these other 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:50.960 guys out on the street dressed in leather. That surely 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.800 has no bearing on what I've done. Must be a coincidence. 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:59.679 Dunce Well, a lot to unpack here. 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:03.120 Dive in from the initial conception of the band from 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.679 a Frenchman walking around Granwich Village, the band's tragic and 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:10.439 honestly quite surprising connection to nine to eleven. The charitable 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.160 organizations allege a connection to the CIA, the historical legal 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.960 precedent that resulted in the wake of the song and 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:20.160 the Rolling Stone hit it helped inspire plus the origin 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.560 of that famous dance. Here's everything you didn't know about 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:35.800 Ymca by the village people. The village people like so 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.200 many of life. Some pleasantries are a fault of the French. 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:43.760 Thank you for citing that in for me. You're welcome. 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:47.600 I recently discovered that I have in the analytics can 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:52.640 see where very precisely, like down to individual cities and 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:55.640 like large towns where people are listening. I haven't checked 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.160 to see how many how many French people are listening, 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:02.640 So if you're listening right now, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:04.240 at least I don't know. If I go is no, 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:07.840 I'm gonna do a segment and it will be part 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.680 of our kofee thanking the fans kind of thing. I 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:12.360 want to go through and look down because there were 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:16.320 some like fairly small like so somebody listening from Wookesbury, Pennsylvania, 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:18.960 which is next to the town where my mom grew up. 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.160 So hello folks, if you're listening right now, we should 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:24.880 drive past the Carousel Strip Club on the way to 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.280 visit my grandparents, and I, as a little kid, thought 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.120 it was a real carousel and always wanted to stop 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.680 and go, and my parents would always find reasons to not. 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:36.040 I don't know if it's still there, but said my 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:40.360 best to everybody in Woosbury, Pennsylvania. Anyway, back to Leatherman, 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:45.080 The Village People were a brainchild of French music producer 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:49.160 and promoter Jacques Morale, and it was essentially to appeal to, 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:53.000 some may say, exploit, the burgeoning disco scene of the 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:54.359 late seventies, which. 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:56.000 As we discussed in our Studio fifty. 0:15:55.800 --> 0:16:00.040 Four episode, was largely gay disco we forget now. It 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.640 was originally the music of the disenfranchised, the queer community 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:07.200 and anybody else who'd essentially been othered gathered in downtown 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:09.760 loft parties in the late sixties and early seventies of 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.600 Manhattan because they essentially had nowhere else that they could 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.760 drink and dance publicly due to discriminatory cabaret laws that 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:18.960 prohibited same sex dancing, and the music played in these 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:20.240 underground parties. 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:21.200 Were generally soul. 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:23.640 In R and B, you had guys like David Mancuso, 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.080 who's arguably the most famous underground DJ of the early seventies, 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:31.000 playing stuff like Mandudubango's nineteen seventy two proto disco classic 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:34.960 soul ma Cosa, which is probably best known these days 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.200 for its reference or sample in Michael Jackson's want to 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:39.000 be Starting something. 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:43.280 I'm say, mam say, ma'ma sokas. Yeah, I'm say mamaselle, 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.400 what's that mean? Macosa means dance in Cameroonian, which is 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:49.320 where Manu Debongo was from. 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:52.400 So David Mancuso passed Saul ma Coosa to a broadcast 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:54.960 DJ friend who started playing it on air, and that 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:58.360 arguably became the first true disco hit. And so more 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:01.240 of these sounds started to escape these downtown loft parties 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.840 and it started to break into the mainstream and call 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:07.479 us into a genre which we now know is disco 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.000 and has its origins in soul, funk and salsa traditions 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.400 of the Black and Latino communities which were played at. 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:16.320 These gay dances. So, despite its reputation these days. 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:20.199 As corny or hackey, disco started off having all the 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:24.000 musical and cultural integrity in the world. But one of 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.120 the factors, the biggest factor I would say that gave 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:29.080 disco a bad name was the second and third and 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:33.240 fourth wave of castions perpetrated by guys like our frenchman 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:34.560 Jacques Moraley. 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.240 Did that miss anything there? Like thumbing the else sketch 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:38.240 in the origins at disco? 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.120 Yeah, I mean it's it's I think I've mentioned him before, 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.440 but I had a college professor named Thomas Stanley. Yeah. 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:45.120 He was just like, I don't get why people bag 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:48.040 on disco. Man. It says like everybody can dance to disco. 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.280 It's four on the floor, you know, give people a 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.520 quarter note. Everybody deserves the dance. Yeah, everybody deserves to dance. 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:58.040 Give people a quarter note. Yeah, I mean, ah, with 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:03.760 distance and knowing that we put up with now, it 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.919 just sounds like it's all gold to me, you know, 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:11.080 like even like even like Boogie Boogie Wonderland, I'm just like, 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:13.720 what a oh, that's that's earth Winded Fire. Sorry, what's 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:16.200 the one? Boogie Woogie Shoes? Can you sing a little bit? 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:20.080 I want to put them. I wanna put on my 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:21.040 boogie shoes. 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:26.240 I actually don't know that song. Can you believe it? 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:29.480 That's a wedding DJ I really, dude, I'm thinking of 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:33.920 the Boogie Ogi Ogi one. That song also actually goes 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:37.200 You've got to know this song. You you lived through 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.560 the era when it was a huge hit, for when 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:42.520 it was not maybe not huge, but the sample was 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:43.639 for a trick daddy. 0:18:44.680 --> 0:19:03.480 First place I heard the horns, Oh. 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:04.159 Yeah, I mean like, I don't know. I listen to 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:06.040 that and I'm just like, yeah, this smokes. These are 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.000 like real musicians playing in a room. You know. It's 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:11.200 just I'm so I've my attitude towards almost all disco 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:13.479 has softened. Yeah. 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:14.720 No, that's a good point, you know. 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:17.120 Now now I'm looking up the origin of the term 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:21.200 boogie boogers. The origin of the term boogie woogie is unknown. 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:23.159 Oxfording in sixth United States that the word is a 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.280 redoubling of boogie, which was used for rent parties as 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:30.080 early as nineteen thirteen, maybe derived from Sierra Leone term 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:33.680 a bogie, which means to dance. Also maybe akin to 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.800 the phrase hoosa boogoo, which means to beat drums. 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:37.400 Huh. 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:39.840 In the late twenties and early thirties, the term could 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.040 mean anything from a racy style of dance to a 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:43.600 raucus party or a. 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:44.880 Sexually transmitted disease. 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:45.760 Cool. 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:51.160 Well, this concludes your history of disco and boogie. Jacques Moraley, 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:52.800 the man who is. 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:56.440 The godfather of village people. I suppose he's a fascinating man. 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.680 He started out writing music for live orchestras in France, 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:05.280 including the legendary slash infamous Parisian nightclub Crazy Horse. He 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:07.639 also produced a record by a future member of the 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:09.720 band King Harvest, who would go on to have a 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.760 massive hit with Dancing in the Moonlight Great Song, which was. 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:13.400 My prom theme. 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.040 Yeah yeah, yeah, that band King Harvest was named after 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:17.000 the band song. 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:19.120 I did know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:19.600 told me that. 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:22.159 I probably. Yeah. 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:24.800 I love making things that have a lot of artistic integrity, 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:26.040 a lot lamer and kitcher. 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:30.119 Yeah me too. Well. 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:33.720 Jacques Moraley apparently came to the United States after winning 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:37.919 a twentieth Century Fox slogan contest. I that's what a 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:40.520 rolling Stone piece says, and I have no further info 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:44.000 on that, okay, but I enjoy that. He soon fell 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:46.199 in love with the sounds of disco and started co 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:49.600 producing Philly soul adjacent axe like The Richie Family, which 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:53.400 tragically does not feature Lionel Ritchie. In nineteen seventy five, 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:57.119 Moraley took a fateful trip to Greenwich Village. The story 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:59.800 has been told many many, many times, in multiple ways. 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:03.520 I'm going to choose to print the legends with the 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:07.359 most colorful version. Morale would say that he was walking 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:10.520 through the village when he heard the sounds of bells jingling. 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:13.480 He turned and looked and caught sight of a man 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:16.879 in a full on Native American outfit, complete with headdress 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:18.080 and bells on his feet. 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:20.840 The year was two thousand and nine, it was Coachella. 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:26.440 Intrigued, Moraley followed him into a nearby gay club called 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:29.560 I Believe the Anvil, where this man was reporting to 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.440 work as a dancer and bartender. Maraley started peppering in 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.240 with questions and learned that his name was Philippe Rose 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.000 and he was actually part Lakota Soue. Inspired by the 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:43.040 fancy dress of all the men around him, cowboys, etc. 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.200 Moraley dreamed up the idea for a band, and Maraley's 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:50.120 business partner, a man named Henri Bololo, happened to accompany 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:52.919 him on the strip downtown, and Belolo recalled it vividly 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:57.360 in a two thousand interview with discodisco dot Com. Philippe 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:00.199 Rose was serving and also dancing on the bar. I 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:03.040 bet he was serving and while we were watching him 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.240 dancing and sipping our beer. We saw a cowboy watching 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:09.560 him dance, and Jacques and I suddenly had the same idea. 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:13.719 We said, my god, look at those characters. We started 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:18.000 to fantasize about what were the characters of America, the mix, 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:21.639 you know, the American man. And we named this mix 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:26.080 the village people because they were in Gretich village. 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:26.679 Get it. 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:31.120 The French are unable to like not condescend to us 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:34.040 in our own country. But I guess so, I mean, 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:35.320 we do that to them all the time, with like 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:39.040 the cigarette smoking and the existentialism, and like they really 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:42.960 really loved to come over here and just talk down 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:49.520 to us, the twentieth centuries, pre eminent Nazi collaborators coming 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:51.560 over here and making fun of us. For the legend 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:57.480 of the American West cough Oh. 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:02.199 By nineteen seventy seven, producers Moraley and Audria Bololo. I 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:05.880 can't I love saying that name assemble the group designed 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:10.240 to attract a gay audience while parroting, or some would claim, exploiting, 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:15.440 that same constituency stereotypes. These roles were all very carefully considered, 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:17.800 you know, the Native American, the cop. 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:24.000 The construction worker, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, union man, good guy, 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:26.280 union guy. Yeah. 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:28.399 The timeline of how the band came together is a 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:31.520 little fuzzy. I've seen that the first person Moraley invited 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:34.880 to join was Philippe Rose, the American guy from the bar, 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:38.439 just because he was the guy that he saw first. 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:40.679 Some reports say that he invited him to join this 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:42.600 project that very night at the bar. 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:44.720 It seems that sounds like something that you would do 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:46.720 at a bar in Greenwich Village in the nineteen seventies, 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:49.600 like come up with a million selling band, like whacked 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:52.840 out on good coke, and like watching a buff to 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:57.200 gay dude dance. It's the beach scene from the doors 0:23:57.200 --> 0:23:59.760 where he's like, you and me are going to form 0:23:59.760 --> 0:24:01.359 a band and we're going to make a million dollars. 0:24:02.160 --> 0:24:04.960 But he's like murmuring it to a torque gay dude 0:24:05.200 --> 0:24:11.080 dancing at a bar in a headdress with pictrusive paps. 0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:13.000 Oh man, So. 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:15.080 We'll call him even it was that strictly true, we'll 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:17.760 call him the founding member because he's definitely spiritually the 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:18.360 founding member. 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:19.160 Felipe Rose. 0:24:19.480 --> 0:24:21.879 He was raised in Brooklyn, where he displayed an interest 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:24.600 in the arts during his childhood and he first dressed 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:29.120 as quote an Indian while in school for the Christopher 0:24:29.119 --> 0:24:30.160 Columbus Day parade. 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:32.800 Oh I love this though. 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:36.200 By twenty fourteen, he'd become an ordained minister to marry fans, 0:24:36.560 --> 0:24:39.440 including a gay couple who spontaneously decided to get married 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:43.479 while aboard a ship in Australia, which is adorable. Arguably, 0:24:43.520 --> 0:24:46.840 the most important hire was the next one. Victor Willis, 0:24:46.880 --> 0:24:49.879 the lead singer and eventual lyricist for The Village People. 0:24:50.400 --> 0:24:52.919 Marley would call him quote the young man with the 0:24:52.920 --> 0:24:56.159 big voice. He'd seen him on Broadway performing in The 0:24:56.200 --> 0:24:59.040 Whiz in the original cast before inviting him to join 0:24:59.119 --> 0:25:00.320 his new musical product. 0:25:01.040 --> 0:25:03.480 And truly incredible opener. 0:25:04.520 --> 0:25:06.760 I had a dream that you sang lead vocals on 0:25:06.800 --> 0:25:10.000 my album and it went very very very very big. 0:25:11.440 --> 0:25:13.840 Can you say that on a French accent please? I 0:25:13.880 --> 0:25:21.640 had to dream you played inhale cigarette just pictured Serge Gainsburg. Yeah, 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:23.919 you're gonna assemble the image of like five o'clock shadow 0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:26.560 and lidded eyes like smoking a cigarette. I had to 0:25:26.640 --> 0:25:28.639 dream you sang lead vocalis on my album and it 0:25:28.760 --> 0:25:30.920 went valet valet valet meeg. 0:25:34.480 --> 0:25:38.159 I'm gonna put the uh the Surge Gainsburg song that 0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:40.840 was bands like the opening instrumental part under what you 0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:41.359 just said? 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:51.879 I had to dream You sang lead vocalis on my 0:25:51.880 --> 0:25:59.760 album and it went Valet Valet and Valet meeg God, 0:25:59.840 --> 0:26:04.520 he sucks. What a clown? People like the video of 0:26:04.600 --> 0:26:08.680 hit them in the late nineties with a little kid. Yeah, 0:26:09.280 --> 0:26:12.480 stressedes him painted on stubble and he's like moved to 0:26:12.640 --> 0:26:16.840 tears by it, like pathetic. I'm sorry, I forget that 0:26:16.880 --> 0:26:18.919 must be moving to you as a person, but like, 0:26:19.840 --> 0:26:25.160 no idiot. He fumbled Jane Burkin. He fumbled Jane Burkin. 0:26:25.240 --> 0:26:28.640 He said like he was within a foot of Whitney Houston, 0:26:28.920 --> 0:26:32.560 which not many people got to be, and like fumbled that. 0:26:32.600 --> 0:26:34.280 I mean, not that there was ever a chance. But 0:26:34.320 --> 0:26:37.160 he like immediately pissed her off by being a weird pervert. 0:26:37.240 --> 0:26:40.880 So like, oh yeah, yeah for him, man, that's who 0:26:40.920 --> 0:26:43.800 people think of you as you know, why don't celebrate 0:26:43.840 --> 0:26:44.920 that well. 0:26:44.920 --> 0:26:48.439 He also made a concept album starring his wife playing 0:26:48.440 --> 0:26:52.000 a fourteen year old that he hit with his rolls 0:26:52.080 --> 0:26:53.920 Royce and then obsessed. 0:26:53.920 --> 0:26:56.040 But he I didn't even get into the pederast. I 0:26:56.040 --> 0:26:56.920 didn't even get. 0:26:56.720 --> 0:27:00.360 Into the Lemon Incess too, the song with his Yeah 0:27:00.560 --> 0:27:00.840 about that. 0:27:01.040 --> 0:27:03.640 Yeah, yeah, super weird considering all the kids later dressed 0:27:03.720 --> 0:27:07.800 up as him and the weeping Oh just as clownish 0:27:07.840 --> 0:27:09.960 clownish people can. 0:27:10.000 --> 0:27:13.639 We discussed lemon incest on one episode. I forget what 0:27:13.680 --> 0:27:15.840 it was for, but yeah, he did a song with 0:27:15.880 --> 0:27:18.800 his daughter Charlotte, and the video for it was them 0:27:18.840 --> 0:27:21.640 in debt if I recall, yeah. 0:27:21.960 --> 0:27:24.119 She defended it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think 0:27:24.160 --> 0:27:26.040 she defends it to the stage because they're weird people, 0:27:26.119 --> 0:27:28.080 the French. You know, she lives here now though, right 0:27:28.119 --> 0:27:30.240 you think it would have been like trained out of her. No, 0:27:30.359 --> 0:27:33.199 we can't do that. That's the thing. Like they're impervious 0:27:33.240 --> 0:27:36.640 to American programming. You cannot find a French person who's 0:27:36.680 --> 0:27:41.600 been americanized. I'm serious, I'm not joking about this. Like, 0:27:41.760 --> 0:27:43.800 think of every French person you met in New York. 0:27:43.880 --> 0:27:46.679 You would never go, oh, that's like an American with 0:27:46.680 --> 0:27:51.960 a slight accent. You're like, that's a French person. You know, 0:27:52.000 --> 0:27:55.320 they always staring out a window or like the Berets, 0:27:55.440 --> 0:27:59.520 like come on, So, yeah, you can never break that programming. 0:27:59.560 --> 0:28:03.399 I mean it's just not possible. Imagine being so fucking 0:28:03.480 --> 0:28:06.840 weird for your dad that, like thirty years later, you're like, no, 0:28:06.960 --> 0:28:12.480 that Incests song was funny, good bit. Pah. 0:28:12.640 --> 0:28:14.800 I don't think she said funny. I think she said beautiful. 0:28:15.440 --> 0:28:19.280 Well that's even stupider. I mean, you know it's funny. 0:28:19.280 --> 0:28:21.760 Though I was at a performance at this school last night. Well, 0:28:21.800 --> 0:28:23.800 I can't mention my place of work on here, even 0:28:23.840 --> 0:28:27.000 though it's obviously visible on my Twitter and LinkedIn. I 0:28:27.080 --> 0:28:28.280 was at a performance the other night and heard a 0:28:28.320 --> 0:28:31.840 lot of Debusy performed, and man, I fucking love Debusy. Dude, 0:28:31.840 --> 0:28:34.359 his harmonies are just his chord voicing is just like 0:28:34.680 --> 0:28:38.000 when people talk about like, oh, composers integrating sounds from 0:28:38.000 --> 0:28:41.360 other cultures, like it's usually so fascile, but like that 0:28:41.400 --> 0:28:44.720 guy really heard like ragtime and dominant seventh chords and 0:28:44.880 --> 0:28:46.800 was like, no, this is my thing now because I 0:28:46.840 --> 0:28:49.480 didn't realize. But his like mature period that people consider 0:28:49.560 --> 0:28:51.800 when he wrote all the Bangers started at forty, so 0:28:51.960 --> 0:28:55.640 you know, yeah, anyway, Debuty's cool. Didn't he do weird 0:28:55.640 --> 0:28:56.080 stuff too? 0:28:56.520 --> 0:28:56.640 Uh? 0:28:56.760 --> 0:28:58.760 I mean yeah, dude, every one of those composers was 0:28:58.800 --> 0:29:04.440 like fucking on and like living like rock stars. Well 0:29:04.480 --> 0:29:06.520 back to the assembly of Yeah, I mean just cut 0:29:06.560 --> 0:29:09.920 off that young men, just fade me down in the 0:29:09.920 --> 0:29:14.520 background and just paste in like like yeah, or I 0:29:14.560 --> 0:29:16.920 was going to say, like an MTA lady like robot voice, 0:29:16.960 --> 0:29:21.960 like Alex goes on anti French rant. Sorry, what about 0:29:21.960 --> 0:29:25.600 Okay these guys village people. That's two. We're up to two. 0:29:25.920 --> 0:29:28.480 So now he's now he's got the Native American and 0:29:28.680 --> 0:29:31.360 uh Victor Willis who was the cop, he was the 0:29:31.360 --> 0:29:33.360 cop and I think he was occasionally a naval commander. 0:29:33.440 --> 0:29:37.680 To Victor Willis invited his friend, a fellow musical theater 0:29:37.760 --> 0:29:41.400 veteran named Alex Briley, who was at various points a soldier, 0:29:41.520 --> 0:29:44.320 a sailor following the release of in the Navy, and 0:29:44.360 --> 0:29:45.440 also a naval cadet. 0:29:45.520 --> 0:29:47.480 It's just so funny they had they had a pinch hitter. 0:29:47.960 --> 0:29:49.240 He was like, I need you to come in and 0:29:49.240 --> 0:29:54.760 play three to five gay stereotypes because in the beginning 0:29:54.800 --> 0:29:57.960 it was just a studio enterprise. So having a utility 0:29:58.040 --> 0:30:01.080 guy in the Village People was just a funny to me, Like, 0:30:01.680 --> 0:30:03.760 oh yeah, throw him in. He's good in any position. 0:30:04.120 --> 0:30:08.320 What you got, Yeah, the sixth Man Award for the 0:30:08.800 --> 0:30:10.240 for the People. 0:30:11.240 --> 0:30:14.360 This is not the most interesting fact about Alex Briley. 0:30:15.160 --> 0:30:17.320 I need to modulate my tone for this. Yeah, go 0:30:17.360 --> 0:30:19.120 to Syria to go to True crime guy. 0:30:21.280 --> 0:30:25.080 Interesting side note about Alex Briley, his brother Jonathan is 0:30:25.120 --> 0:30:28.480 believed to be the man depicted in the iconic, slash 0:30:28.520 --> 0:30:31.360 horrifying photograph taken on nine to eleven by Richard Drew, 0:30:31.920 --> 0:30:36.920 known as the Falling Man. It defies description, but if 0:30:36.920 --> 0:30:38.360 you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. 0:30:38.360 --> 0:30:40.440 And if not, I was. 0:30:40.440 --> 0:30:41.800 Gonna say google it. No, maybe don't. 0:30:41.840 --> 0:30:43.960 It's an image of a man falling from the upper 0:30:44.000 --> 0:30:45.320 floors of the North Tower. 0:30:45.520 --> 0:30:47.080 It's unclear if he jumped or fell. 0:30:48.080 --> 0:30:52.360 Just this is gonna sound grotesque, but just the angle 0:30:52.400 --> 0:30:54.560 of him and the angle of the building, it's it's 0:30:54.600 --> 0:30:59.400 a very striking image. Deeply upsetting, very striking. 0:30:59.080 --> 0:31:01.800 I can say, some would say haunting. Yeah, extremely haunting. 0:31:02.160 --> 0:31:06.600 Elton John, for some reason, owns the original Jesus Christ 0:31:06.960 --> 0:31:10.160 and he's described it as the most perfect photo ever taken. 0:31:11.320 --> 0:31:12.280 But you didn't think I was. 0:31:12.240 --> 0:31:16.080 Going to Elton John, But yeah, he is an enormous 0:31:16.080 --> 0:31:19.240 photography collection, and he has the original and he's described 0:31:19.240 --> 0:31:21.920 it as the most perfect photo ever taken. I believe 0:31:22.520 --> 0:31:25.320 the image is the subject of an amazing Esquire piece 0:31:25.360 --> 0:31:29.760 by Tom Janaud. He wrote the profile of mister Rogers 0:31:29.760 --> 0:31:32.600 that was turned into the movie with Tom Hanks a 0:31:32.640 --> 0:31:35.800 few years ago, and it's also the subject of a 0:31:35.840 --> 0:31:38.240 two thousand and six documentary film called The Falling Man, 0:31:38.920 --> 0:31:41.040 all of which are trying to determine the identity of 0:31:41.080 --> 0:31:43.560 who this man is, because obviously it's even those a 0:31:43.600 --> 0:31:45.960 telephoto lens, it's hard to make out. But the most 0:31:46.000 --> 0:31:49.200 likely candidate so far is the younger brother of the 0:31:49.320 --> 0:31:51.040 Navy guy from the Village People. 0:31:51.080 --> 0:31:52.240 His name is Jonathan Briley. 0:31:52.680 --> 0:31:54.840 He worked as an audio engineer at the Windows of 0:31:54.880 --> 0:31:57.160 the World restaurant on top of the North Tower and 0:31:57.200 --> 0:32:00.400 the World Trade Center, and the impact of the plane 0:32:00.560 --> 0:32:04.000 rendered all of the exit stairwells impassable, so everyone above 0:32:04.040 --> 0:32:05.480 the impact zone died. 0:32:07.520 --> 0:32:10.959 Should we get back to Disco, imagine clocking in at 0:32:10.960 --> 0:32:14.440 your job running the PA at the Windows in the 0:32:14.480 --> 0:32:16.680 World planeheads. 0:32:16.840 --> 0:32:21.000 Yeah, it's and they were not far from the I 0:32:21.120 --> 0:32:23.560 believe it was the observation deck. They were almost on 0:32:23.840 --> 0:32:25.719 the top floor, so they were only one or two 0:32:25.760 --> 0:32:28.800 floors down from the observation deck and for some reason 0:32:29.280 --> 0:32:31.600 they couldn't open the doors up there because they were 0:32:31.600 --> 0:32:34.320 going to try to have helicopters land up there to 0:32:34.320 --> 0:32:35.400 hoist people off. 0:32:35.520 --> 0:32:38.560 But yeah, let's just get off. Let's get off nine 0:32:38.560 --> 0:32:43.640 to eleven. Just maybe as a general I did. I did, 0:32:43.760 --> 0:32:45.800 and to my peril, I forgot how much you actually 0:32:45.880 --> 0:32:51.479 know about it a week after the election. But we're 0:32:51.520 --> 0:32:55.720 in a political podcast here, folks. Let's roll anyway. As 0:32:55.760 --> 0:32:58.440 they say, remember remember the weird I was talking to 0:32:58.520 --> 0:33:00.440 all these zoomers at our school and I was like, man, 0:33:00.480 --> 0:33:02.680 you guys like they genuinely do not know what nine 0:33:02.720 --> 0:33:05.480 to eleven was like, like the fallout from oh yeah, 0:33:05.640 --> 0:33:08.480 oh yeah, they like. I was like, you got I 0:33:08.520 --> 0:33:11.239 mean they, I said, like, they renamed French fries at 0:33:11.280 --> 0:33:14.080 my high school. That was like a nationally really that 0:33:14.160 --> 0:33:16.200 was like a national but that was a national story, 0:33:16.360 --> 0:33:18.640 right like they were. So they didn't do it. I 0:33:19.000 --> 0:33:20.960 think we laughed at the people who did do it. 0:33:20.960 --> 0:33:23.320 It was in the White House cafeteria, as I remember, 0:33:23.560 --> 0:33:24.720 and then they what's. 0:33:24.600 --> 0:33:26.520 Different what Bush's House. 0:33:26.640 --> 0:33:28.440 My point is is that there was somebody in Central 0:33:28.440 --> 0:33:30.640 PA who took that at face value and did it 0:33:30.680 --> 0:33:33.320 in a high school, And these kids were like laughing, 0:33:33.520 --> 0:33:35.959 and I was like, you don't know, Like when we 0:33:36.000 --> 0:33:39.240 found out that let's roll was like the last words 0:33:39.360 --> 0:33:44.880 from that one guy. Yeah, I was like, didn't Florida 0:33:45.040 --> 0:33:49.840 or some Neil Young stop just naming things. Didn't some 0:33:50.160 --> 0:33:54.480 like top ten college adopt that is like their slogan 0:33:54.640 --> 0:33:56.280 or something. Tide. 0:33:56.440 --> 0:33:56.920 I don't know. 0:33:56.960 --> 0:34:00.080 I know it wasn't roll Tide, but I don't know. 0:34:00.200 --> 0:34:04.480 Truly crazy times eclipsed by every year since. 0:34:05.080 --> 0:34:07.480 Yep, yeah, pretty much boy. 0:34:07.320 --> 0:34:10.040 Okay, Jesus Christ. The main lyricists for The Village People's 0:34:10.080 --> 0:34:12.640 first album were Phil Hurt and Peter Whitehead, who were 0:34:12.680 --> 0:34:16.600 brought in purely because producer Moraley was French and could 0:34:16.600 --> 0:34:19.480 not speak English. God, this whole story becomes so much 0:34:19.480 --> 0:34:21.400 funnier when you imagine him doing all of this in 0:34:21.440 --> 0:34:25.000 like a brick thick French accent, not even lightly accented. 0:34:25.840 --> 0:34:29.919 Whitehead wrote lyrics that Morelly deemed too obscene for mainstream pop, 0:34:30.120 --> 0:34:32.759 so he had Peter Hurt, who'd already topped the charts 0:34:32.760 --> 0:34:35.000 by writing I'll be around for the Spinners, which is 0:34:35.040 --> 0:34:37.200 like a top ten song of all time. 0:34:37.600 --> 0:34:37.920 I'll be. 0:34:42.000 --> 0:34:45.520 Yeah great bass break anyway, he has some He came 0:34:45.560 --> 0:34:49.680 in to straight wash the song Hurt. Was reportedly offered 0:34:49.680 --> 0:34:52.120 the lead singer spot initially, but he turned it down. 0:34:52.920 --> 0:34:55.200 It's an important to note that, as we did previously 0:34:55.239 --> 0:34:57.399 but really underscored after all the nine to eleven talk, 0:34:57.480 --> 0:35:00.960 that not all the Village People were gay. Singer Victor Willis, 0:35:00.960 --> 0:35:03.759 who did have a handwriting some of the group's biggest hits, 0:35:03.800 --> 0:35:08.440 including Yes Ymca, was married to Felicia ayers Allen, who 0:35:08.480 --> 0:35:10.520 would go on to play Claire Huxtable on The Cosby 0:35:10.560 --> 0:35:14.960 Show The Nuts Yeah, good for him, and Willis would 0:35:14.960 --> 0:35:17.200 repeatedly say over the years that he did not co 0:35:17.280 --> 0:35:20.520 write Ymca in the Navy or Macho Man with the 0:35:20.520 --> 0:35:25.680 specific intention of making them gay anthems, which, Jesus Christ again, 0:35:26.040 --> 0:35:28.960 you're either lying or genuinely one of the stupidest people alive, 0:35:29.840 --> 0:35:32.280 especially when you realize that The Village People's self titled 0:35:32.320 --> 0:35:37.160 first album contains four tracks which are San Francisco parentheses, 0:35:37.280 --> 0:35:41.400 You've Got Me in Hollywood parentheses, Everybody Is a Star, 0:35:41.960 --> 0:35:46.520 and then Fire Island, before closing with Village People, which 0:35:46.600 --> 0:35:47.280 was the name. 0:35:47.120 --> 0:35:49.440 Of the band of New York Spirits. 0:35:49.520 --> 0:35:51.400 Village Also, if for those of you who don't know, 0:35:51.480 --> 0:35:56.680 Fire Island is like a intensely popular it's Long Island technically, right, 0:35:56.920 --> 0:36:00.399 I believe so. Yeah, it's a very popular gay nation 0:36:00.600 --> 0:36:05.799 stop for the the moneyed class. I mean, I think 0:36:05.800 --> 0:36:08.200 at one point it was like genuinely very like on 0:36:08.320 --> 0:36:10.680 the when when Long Island was like in the Hampton's 0:36:10.719 --> 0:36:12.759 were like the wilderness, when no one out there. I 0:36:12.800 --> 0:36:14.040 think it was like a big kind. 0:36:13.880 --> 0:36:15.319 Of like Capodi would go out there. 0:36:15.360 --> 0:36:19.120 I think, yeah, like clandestine or just more hidden, more 0:36:19.239 --> 0:36:21.680 bohemian kind of spot. And then of course, like everything, 0:36:21.760 --> 0:36:28.160 it became fucking terrible. As you meditate on that. We'll 0:36:28.200 --> 0:36:31.440 be right back with more too much information after these messages. 0:36:42.880 --> 0:36:46.919 Village People's first single, because the afore mentioned San Francisco parentheses, 0:36:47.040 --> 0:36:51.000 You've Got Me, did actually not well. It didn't crack 0:36:51.080 --> 0:36:53.520 the top one hundred on Billboard. It hit one oh two. 0:36:54.080 --> 0:36:56.480 The Village People were signed to Casablanca Records, which was 0:36:56.760 --> 0:36:58.879 at the time a new label formed by a guy 0:36:58.960 --> 0:37:02.080 named Neil Bogar, an incredible seventies name. 0:37:02.120 --> 0:37:04.920 If I've ever heard one Yeah Yeah yeah. 0:37:04.480 --> 0:37:07.000 After cutting his teeth by producing the group Cute question 0:37:07.080 --> 0:37:10.560 Mark and the Mysterians, including their garage rock classic ninety 0:37:10.600 --> 0:37:14.080 six tiers Hell Yeah Yeah or the er garage rock 0:37:14.120 --> 0:37:14.680 song it's. 0:37:14.560 --> 0:37:17.080 Like that in Louis Louis, Oh Yeah, oh yeah. I 0:37:17.080 --> 0:37:19.080 was gonna say and maybe something like them. 0:37:20.200 --> 0:37:25.600 No, I don't know, no too Irish. Yeah, it's gotta 0:37:25.640 --> 0:37:27.320 be something America. It's gotta be like the Seeds or 0:37:27.320 --> 0:37:30.000 the Sonics. I was gonna go to Van Morrison thing 0:37:30.000 --> 0:37:32.440 that I don't care. Van Morrison is too like, he's 0:37:32.480 --> 0:37:34.239 not he's not tough enough. I mean, he's like a 0:37:34.320 --> 0:37:38.160 drunken a but he's not like the entirety of moon 0:37:38.280 --> 0:37:40.160 Dance is about him, like being moved to tears by 0:37:40.239 --> 0:37:45.040 drinking water from a Irish stream. That's not garage rock. 0:37:45.520 --> 0:37:48.680 I mean, if you say the word fantabulous and Jeff 0:37:48.719 --> 0:37:51.439 fox Worthy voice, you're not you're not garage rock. 0:37:53.080 --> 0:37:56.000 And Bilgert had done a bunch of other dogs like 0:37:56.080 --> 0:38:01.359 green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers, Yummy, yummy, yummy parentheses, 0:38:01.840 --> 0:38:07.440 I've got Love in my tummy? Is that the full title? Okay? 0:38:07.800 --> 0:38:09.840 No, I don't think that's the full title, but I'm glad. 0:38:10.000 --> 0:38:10.880 I'm glad you know it. 0:38:11.000 --> 0:38:14.080 Speaking of innuendo songs, man, good. 0:38:13.960 --> 0:38:21.919 Lord, oh my right, I mean god, I never really 0:38:21.960 --> 0:38:23.080 thought of that, to be honest. 0:38:23.360 --> 0:38:26.440 You live an incredibly cloistered life in that little head 0:38:26.480 --> 0:38:29.920 of years, don't you. Just a whole infrastructure they're dedicated 0:38:29.960 --> 0:38:31.399 to keeping them a lot of things out. 0:38:31.960 --> 0:38:33.720 I just did a tight five on nine to eleven. 0:38:33.719 --> 0:38:34.480 What do you want from me? 0:38:36.040 --> 0:38:44.160 I gotta balance it out somehow, et cetera. New Bogart 0:38:44.200 --> 0:38:47.719 his CV Bogert very much Sawivillage People was following in 0:38:47.760 --> 0:38:50.840 this lineage of novelty hits. If you look at the 0:38:50.880 --> 0:38:54.239 acts that he signed, Kiss Donna Summer, who, as you 0:38:54.320 --> 0:38:57.919 mentioned earlier, was best known for like an insanely long 0:38:57.960 --> 0:39:02.480 playing song crafted by an Italian coke maniac, consisted mostly 0:39:02.520 --> 0:39:07.880 of orgasmic sounds. But Casablanca seemed to luck into having 0:39:07.960 --> 0:39:10.440 some of the best acts of the seventies on there 0:39:10.480 --> 0:39:13.439 that had not just Kiss Donna Summer and Village People. 0:39:13.480 --> 0:39:17.239 They had share lips inc uh, Parliament, one of George 0:39:17.280 --> 0:39:21.960 Clinton's I'm actually still too white to understand how Parliament 0:39:22.760 --> 0:39:26.680 and Funkadelic came together and then split again. I know, 0:39:26.840 --> 0:39:31.080 Parliaments was his like do wop group, and then Funkadelic 0:39:31.239 --> 0:39:33.560 was like a separate thing that he started and then 0:39:33.840 --> 0:39:34.840 they became one. 0:39:35.160 --> 0:39:37.120 When a funk band on a duop group love each 0:39:37.120 --> 0:39:37.880 other very much. 0:39:38.600 --> 0:39:42.040 And George Clinton is doing prodigious amounts of acid, like 0:39:42.160 --> 0:39:45.440 acid and coke, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No. I just 0:39:45.480 --> 0:39:47.399 think it's funny because he was, like I just think 0:39:47.440 --> 0:39:50.000 of him as like one of the outliers of Black 0:39:50.040 --> 0:39:54.680 American acid consumption, you know, like yeah, other than other 0:39:54.760 --> 0:39:57.279 than Hendrix and sly Stone. I mean, like, you know, 0:39:57.800 --> 0:40:02.200 Barry Gordy wasn't doing acid, Booker t was not doing 0:40:02.400 --> 0:40:05.160 I wasn't doing acid. Like all those Southern Fried guys 0:40:05.160 --> 0:40:09.480 were not acid heads anyway, got p funk rules? Yeah, 0:40:09.719 --> 0:40:12.600 Flashlight song rips. We should pick one of their forty 0:40:12.640 --> 0:40:16.600 records to do. Did you ever hear the story about 0:40:16.600 --> 0:40:19.000 them driving into the filming of Night of the Living Dead? 0:40:19.239 --> 0:40:22.440 This sounds familiar, but I know, did they not know 0:40:22.480 --> 0:40:23.360 it was a movie with it? 0:40:23.480 --> 0:40:26.279 No, they didn't. They were all extremely on acid and 0:40:26.400 --> 0:40:30.040 driving through like outside Pittsburgh where that movie is filmed 0:40:30.040 --> 0:40:34.040 in Monroeville, Oh my God, and like late at night 0:40:34.320 --> 0:40:37.800 and just happened to stumble across like a zombie scene 0:40:37.880 --> 0:40:43.360 being filmed, the er American zombie text being filmed in 0:40:43.400 --> 0:40:46.080 the middle of the night while they were all extremely 0:40:46.400 --> 0:40:49.840 up on acid and whatever else. Like. Imagine what that 0:40:49.960 --> 0:40:51.480 must have been like to be a fly on that 0:40:51.560 --> 0:40:55.759 bus wall sadly knew. Bogert died in nineteen eighty two 0:40:55.960 --> 0:40:59.080 of lymphoma at the very young age of thirty nine. 0:41:00.000 --> 0:41:03.040 His son, though, has continued his proud legacy. His name 0:41:03.080 --> 0:41:06.280 is Evan Bogart, and he is a crazily accomplished modern 0:41:06.320 --> 0:41:09.520 pop songwriter, co writing Halo with Ryan Tedder for Beyonce 0:41:10.080 --> 0:41:15.680 and Rihanna's SOS. He went semi viral recently for revealing 0:41:15.719 --> 0:41:18.880 that SOS, which of course samples the synth line to 0:41:19.320 --> 0:41:24.000 Soft Cells Deathless hit Tainted Love features a verse that 0:41:24.120 --> 0:41:28.120 is just titles of hit eighties songs strung together and 0:41:28.160 --> 0:41:33.200 no one ever noticed, No Yeah, And that includes take 0:41:33.239 --> 0:41:36.759 on Me. The verse lyrics are take on me, you 0:41:36.840 --> 0:41:39.880 know inside you feel it right? Take me on. I 0:41:39.920 --> 0:41:43.320 could just die in your arms tonight. I melt with you. 0:41:43.320 --> 0:41:47.880 You got me head over heels. You keep me hanging on, man, 0:41:48.120 --> 0:41:50.480 that is so funny way you make me feel. Keep 0:41:50.480 --> 0:41:52.440 Me hanging On, of course, is a sixties one, but 0:41:53.120 --> 0:41:54.080 there was a there was a. 0:41:54.040 --> 0:41:56.360 Cover of it in the eighties by It might have 0:41:56.400 --> 0:41:58.680 been by Soft Cells, somebody out of Kim Wilder eighties 0:41:59.040 --> 0:41:59.479 Kim Wile. 0:42:00.200 --> 0:42:04.239 Someone didn't read ahead in the outline hoisted by your 0:42:04.280 --> 0:42:08.640 own petard. Uh Jesus Christ, this is a real bad 0:42:08.640 --> 0:42:10.880 one for staying on topic. Man. I took an adderall 0:42:10.880 --> 0:42:14.000 to day when there's self titled. I did. When their 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:16.799 self titled album was released in July nineteen seventy seven, 0:42:16.880 --> 0:42:19.640 the Village People were essentially at that point a studio group. 0:42:20.080 --> 0:42:22.240 But when the album sold a million, and the singles 0:42:22.280 --> 0:42:25.799 in Hollywood parentheses Everybody is a Star and San Francisco 0:42:25.920 --> 0:42:29.200 parentheses You've Got Me began to chart in the burgeoning 0:42:29.239 --> 0:42:31.799 disco markets, it became clear that they needed to take 0:42:31.840 --> 0:42:35.160 this show on the road. And Jordan, you've heard it 0:42:35.200 --> 0:42:39.239 said that it was good old Dick Clark that perennially 0:42:40.080 --> 0:42:43.919 Rick dis grinning teenager of the American Psyche told them 0:42:44.040 --> 0:42:44.520 to do it. 0:42:44.640 --> 0:42:46.560 Yeah, it's like the son of Sam the neighbor's dog 0:42:46.600 --> 0:42:49.120 told them to do it. Dick Clark told to do this. 0:42:49.440 --> 0:42:52.560 Dick Clark does tell me to do a lot of things. Actually, 0:42:52.600 --> 0:42:53.600 it's Casey case It's in. 0:42:53.640 --> 0:42:57.120 That, Yeah, yeah, Alex. Dick Clark's a harder impression. 0:42:57.120 --> 0:43:01.040 The hang on, Alex, this has been casey k. I 0:43:01.040 --> 0:43:02.160 don't have it at hand, Alex. 0:43:02.200 --> 0:43:05.080 I don't think you should take any more adderall today. Alex, 0:43:05.200 --> 0:43:15.080 grab that cops gun. Here's a letter, okay. 0:43:16.440 --> 0:43:20.719 Moraley solicited young hopefuls by putting this unforgettable ad in 0:43:20.800 --> 0:43:24.920 the trades, as they called them, macho types wanted, must 0:43:25.040 --> 0:43:29.480 dance and have a mustache. Vocal talent was not mentioned 0:43:29.840 --> 0:43:31.520 because the idea was that they would just be lip 0:43:31.520 --> 0:43:36.200 syncing all these songs. That ad found the band's eventual leatherman, 0:43:36.600 --> 0:43:41.080 construction worker, and Cowboy, three of the remaining American archetypes. 0:43:41.800 --> 0:43:44.360 Aspiring actor Randy Jones was brought on by the Cowboy, 0:43:44.440 --> 0:43:47.120 presumably because he was raised on a real North Carolina farm. 0:43:47.719 --> 0:43:50.840 David Hodo was the construction worker with the mirrored shades 0:43:51.160 --> 0:43:53.040 who would later tell Spin for their oral history on 0:43:53.080 --> 0:43:55.360 the song, I had just finished a musical about the 0:43:55.400 --> 0:43:58.279 Grand Ole Opry and I had a mustache. It was 0:43:58.360 --> 0:44:01.520 Christmas time and I needed money. They wanted a cowboy, 0:44:01.600 --> 0:44:05.000 and I had just finished a Western perfect But when 0:44:05.040 --> 0:44:06.920 they said they wanted me to be a construction worker, 0:44:07.040 --> 0:44:10.000 that was my dad's dream come true. I'm handy, but 0:44:10.080 --> 0:44:13.640 I've never built anything of consequence. I wouldn't say that 0:44:14.040 --> 0:44:18.920 my greatest fear. I wouldn't say that. David I was 0:44:19.960 --> 0:44:23.320 on hook for every next word in that statement musical 0:44:23.320 --> 0:44:27.200 about the grand Ole Opry Christmas time broke. He wanted 0:44:27.200 --> 0:44:29.840 to be a cowboy, they wanted to be a construction worker. 0:44:30.000 --> 0:44:34.680 His dad loved Dad, and then that tremendous kicker. I'm handy, 0:44:34.880 --> 0:44:38.920 but I've never built anything of consequence. It should just 0:44:38.920 --> 0:44:40.960 be the entirety of do you ever hear of Alvin Lucier, 0:44:40.960 --> 0:44:44.400 who's his avant garde composer, who recorded I Am sitting 0:44:44.400 --> 0:44:48.919 in a room. Oh yeah. He just loops a certain 0:44:48.960 --> 0:44:51.040 amount of text. He repeats it over and over until 0:44:51.080 --> 0:44:53.640 the overtones and echoes and everything render it this like 0:44:54.040 --> 0:44:58.279 non speech sound art consolation. We should do that for 0:44:58.320 --> 0:45:01.720 an episode. But I'm just looping the rays. I'm handy, 0:45:01.840 --> 0:45:05.759 but I've never built anything of consequence with increasingly distorted 0:45:06.239 --> 0:45:10.560 tape echo. I'm handy, but I've never built anything of consequence. 0:45:10.960 --> 0:45:14.280 I'm handy, but I've never built anything of consequence. I'm'm 0:45:14.280 --> 0:45:17.640 a handy, but I never really consequence. I'm a hand 0:45:20.920 --> 0:45:29.920 I'm handy, hand I'm hand consequence. Uh Anyway, rounding out 0:45:29.920 --> 0:45:31.719 the group was the only member who didn't come from 0:45:31.719 --> 0:45:35.840 an entertainment background. Glenn Hughes had been a Brooklyn Battery 0:45:35.880 --> 0:45:39.480 Bridge toll collector. Is that corrector I'm just now hearing this, 0:45:39.560 --> 0:45:42.640 that's correct when he was enlisted as the leather clad Biker. 0:45:43.400 --> 0:45:48.399 He is recognized for his extremely expressive horseshoe mustache, while 0:45:48.400 --> 0:45:50.480 his outfit was drawn from the dress code that was 0:45:50.520 --> 0:45:54.680 mandated at the infamous BDSM Leather Bar Mine Shaft, which 0:45:54.719 --> 0:45:58.279 is one of the two gay bars that are the 0:45:58.320 --> 0:46:02.120 inspiration and or filmed at in William Freakin's Cruising, starring 0:46:02.200 --> 0:46:06.240 a very obviously too old for this al Pacino playing 0:46:06.320 --> 0:46:08.680 like a twenty seven year old male cop. Is that 0:46:08.760 --> 0:46:11.560 worth watching? Ah? You know, I've heard a lot of 0:46:11.600 --> 0:46:14.360 people say it is, but it's I think all of 0:46:14.400 --> 0:46:20.160 those people hate you, No, are like freaking dorks. What 0:46:20.200 --> 0:46:23.080 are the actual clubs Get Pulse Orrivinos in There's a 0:46:23.560 --> 0:46:26.719 Oh Man. Richard Gear was going to be the lead 0:46:26.719 --> 0:46:30.040 in that movie. Oh oh okay, so here it is. 0:46:30.080 --> 0:46:33.360 It was intended to depict scenes cruising. Was intended to 0:46:33.400 --> 0:46:36.439 depict the scene at the mine Shaft. However, the mine 0:46:36.440 --> 0:46:38.200 Shaft would not allow them to film in there, so 0:46:38.400 --> 0:46:41.120 instead the scenes for Cruising were filmed at the hell 0:46:41.200 --> 0:46:44.400 Fire Club, which was then set decorated to resemble the 0:46:44.440 --> 0:46:48.239 mind Shaft and then populated with regulars from the mine 0:46:48.280 --> 0:46:53.240 Shaft as extras and also exterior shots were shot around 0:46:53.360 --> 0:46:55.880 the mind Shaft, and al Pacino visited the mine Shaft 0:46:55.920 --> 0:46:59.480 to research the role, so freaking once again demonstrating his 0:46:59.560 --> 0:47:02.040 apex pettiness as a filmmaker, was like, Oh, you want 0:47:02.080 --> 0:47:03.640 to let me film there, I'll just make it look 0:47:03.800 --> 0:47:06.720 like this in every single way anyway. 0:47:06.920 --> 0:47:09.840 This comes back later actually in this episode wonderful. 0:47:10.680 --> 0:47:13.840 In any event, mister Hughes was seen as a dandy 0:47:14.200 --> 0:47:16.239 of the disco age and no less an authority than 0:47:16.280 --> 0:47:18.400 our former employer. People Magazine named him one of the 0:47:18.400 --> 0:47:21.920 most Beautiful people of nineteen seventy nine, but this was 0:47:21.960 --> 0:47:25.000 the same era where they were thrown it like Nick Nolty, right. 0:47:25.520 --> 0:47:27.799 No, this is this is seventies when they when they 0:47:27.840 --> 0:47:30.600 were serious about it. Now the biker from the Village 0:47:30.640 --> 0:47:35.319 People made the cut, Nick Nulty sixiest, that was like 0:47:35.520 --> 0:47:36.600 ninety one, ninety two? 0:47:37.120 --> 0:47:40.360 No was it? Oh my god, you're right it was No, 0:47:40.480 --> 0:47:41.439 it was ninety two. 0:47:42.280 --> 0:47:42.560 Yeah. 0:47:42.600 --> 0:47:47.040 On the basis of what when was that mugshot photo? Yeah, 0:47:47.120 --> 0:47:50.920 Jesus Christ cool man. He was not acting when he 0:47:51.000 --> 0:47:53.680 was clad in those leathers. He was. He died in 0:47:53.760 --> 0:47:55.799 two thousand and one at the age of fifty. When 0:47:57.280 --> 0:47:58.200 did he live to see it? 0:48:01.480 --> 0:48:01.799 You know. 0:48:03.280 --> 0:48:07.880 What Shrek I was striving for the Dana Carve movie. 0:48:07.880 --> 0:48:10.759 That paused for a moment of silence on this set. 0:48:11.360 --> 0:48:14.520 The impression the great impersonator was March. 0:48:14.680 --> 0:48:16.240 No, it was March died in March. 0:48:16.360 --> 0:48:17.000 Ah bummer. 0:48:17.360 --> 0:48:17.600 Wow. 0:48:18.600 --> 0:48:21.360 He was buried in all of his leathers. The title 0:48:21.400 --> 0:48:24.399 song from the second Village People, lp mancho Man, also 0:48:24.440 --> 0:48:26.440 became a best selling single in the summer of nineteen 0:48:26.480 --> 0:48:29.160 seventy eight, while the album itself went platinum as well. 0:48:29.800 --> 0:48:32.160 The group began touring, often featuring a young up and 0:48:32.160 --> 0:48:35.160 comer named Madonna as the Air Opening Act, but by 0:48:35.200 --> 0:48:39.480 nineteen seventy eight their fame would grow exponentially with YMCA. 0:48:40.480 --> 0:48:44.440 Where does the leather guy archetype come from? Is that 0:48:44.480 --> 0:48:47.759 a tom of Finland construction? Nope, gay servicemen returning from 0:48:47.800 --> 0:48:48.319 World War II? 0:48:50.200 --> 0:48:57.120 While leather because they spaw wrinkles Paul linn carry over 0:48:57.160 --> 0:48:58.320 from the Bewitched episode. 0:48:58.960 --> 0:49:01.960 No it, I guess it was part of biker gangs 0:49:01.960 --> 0:49:02.560 in the fifties. 0:49:04.400 --> 0:49:07.640 Now, Okay, this is a sincere question that you probably 0:49:07.640 --> 0:49:13.319 won't have the answer to. Are these looks aspirational, like 0:49:13.840 --> 0:49:17.319 we are attracted to that, and therefore I'm gonna dress 0:49:17.400 --> 0:49:20.000 like that because that is what I'm attracted to? Or 0:49:20.120 --> 0:49:26.200 is the implication that a lot of homosexual men are 0:49:26.239 --> 0:49:29.720 actually bikers, or are actually construction workers, or are actually 0:49:29.760 --> 0:49:30.720 cops or whatever? 0:49:31.080 --> 0:49:31.640 You know what I mean? 0:49:31.760 --> 0:49:33.640 Why can it be? Can it be? Can it be both? 0:49:33.800 --> 0:49:36.200 Can it be both? Jordan? You know, we don't. We 0:49:36.200 --> 0:49:37.600 don't want to limit them anymore. 0:49:39.200 --> 0:49:43.359 The conversational stylings of two straight men discussing gay stereotypes 0:49:43.400 --> 0:49:47.560 from fifty years ago. Don't let anyone ever say that 0:49:47.560 --> 0:49:48.560 we just show doesn't. 0:49:48.320 --> 0:49:50.720 Have any take on back Jesus Christ. 0:49:52.239 --> 0:49:54.879 We had a very cool comment from somebody who listened 0:49:54.880 --> 0:49:58.480 to our Studio fifty four episode that was talking about 0:49:58.520 --> 0:49:59.000 how they. 0:49:59.239 --> 0:50:00.560 It was like their mom or something. 0:50:01.239 --> 0:50:04.120 No, I think they would go there. Oh okay, yeah, 0:50:04.280 --> 0:50:06.040 I don't know how to say this. I'm sorry, d D. 0:50:06.239 --> 0:50:09.480 Ferrera or Faery. The reason a list there was such 0:50:09.480 --> 0:50:12.239 a share Gloria Gaynor or Grace Jones would be turned 0:50:12.239 --> 0:50:14.840 away from a Studio fifty four was because some nights 0:50:15.160 --> 0:50:18.920 it was strictly Dickley and gay sex was allowed to 0:50:18.960 --> 0:50:20.640 be anywhere and everywhere. 0:50:21.000 --> 0:50:22.480 No women were allowed. 0:50:22.120 --> 0:50:26.200 Because they wouldn't be wanted or partaking. Studio fifty four 0:50:26.239 --> 0:50:27.520 documentary mentioned that. 0:50:27.560 --> 0:50:33.600 You wouldn't get it. I remember seeing this archival photograph 0:50:33.680 --> 0:50:36.560 collection at some point when I was in Brooklyn about 0:50:37.239 --> 0:50:40.680 disco gay subculture, and that was when I was introduced 0:50:40.719 --> 0:50:43.239 to the practice of shirt cooking, which was like a 0:50:43.280 --> 0:50:45.160 thing in clubs when you just wore you would just 0:50:45.239 --> 0:50:47.959 wear like a button down, like a button top and 0:50:48.200 --> 0:50:50.960 like nothing else. No, like Winnie the Pooh, Yes exactly, 0:50:51.800 --> 0:50:55.040 but with your shlongout you know, Okay, all right, I 0:50:55.080 --> 0:50:56.880 mean I guess it was maybe presumably it was a 0:50:56.880 --> 0:50:58.960 bit of a self policing scene, like you didn't really 0:50:59.000 --> 0:51:05.080 shirk unless you like had to back it up shirt no, 0:51:05.160 --> 0:51:09.000 because the point was it wasn't un it. It was unshirted. Well, 0:51:09.000 --> 0:51:10.680 I know it was unbottomed. 0:51:10.719 --> 0:51:13.880 Even I'm just aesthetically that's not a good look, though, 0:51:14.360 --> 0:51:14.680 I don't know. 0:51:14.719 --> 0:51:15.839 I'll talk with either. 0:51:16.040 --> 0:51:19.120 No, I mean but there, I don't know, think about 0:51:19.160 --> 0:51:22.640 any number of uh like eighties like like, think about 0:51:22.640 --> 0:51:25.160 the stereotype of like the woman in the man's dress 0:51:25.200 --> 0:51:27.400 shirt the morning after. You know, that's such a. 0:51:27.560 --> 0:51:28.160 M thinking of it. 0:51:28.239 --> 0:51:30.600 I'm thinking, hang on, okay, I'm thinking of it. 0:51:30.600 --> 0:51:30.960 Thank you. 0:51:31.040 --> 0:51:34.479 Now just imagine it's a dude with a big Okay, okay, 0:51:34.480 --> 0:51:36.840 I'm thinking of it. Yeah, so it's a thing. Hey, 0:51:36.960 --> 0:51:38.839 you get it. You get it, this guy gets it. 0:51:39.080 --> 0:51:41.920 You would have been allowed as strictly ticularly you like 0:51:41.960 --> 0:51:43.480 to party. 0:51:44.960 --> 0:51:49.400 Well from uh wun't of the poohing to YMCA, I 0:51:49.400 --> 0:51:51.680 guess it's not that far of a jump. Before we 0:51:51.719 --> 0:51:54.440 go any further, we should probably talk about what the YMCA, 0:51:54.480 --> 0:51:56.960 which has since been re christened the Why in twenty 0:51:57.000 --> 0:52:00.760 ten I believe, actually is, since it's kind of archaic 0:52:00.880 --> 0:52:02.560 these days, I feel like maybe a lot of people 0:52:02.600 --> 0:52:07.040 don't know. YMCA stands for Young Men's Christian Association. A 0:52:07.080 --> 0:52:09.360 lot of people know that, and it's generally associated with 0:52:09.520 --> 0:52:12.839 gyms and at the time provided temporary housing to men. 0:52:13.520 --> 0:52:16.439 The organization was founded in England in eighteen forty four, 0:52:16.480 --> 0:52:19.120 when the Industrial Revolution was bringing the young to urban 0:52:19.200 --> 0:52:22.880 centers in droves. The YMCA was founded essentially as an 0:52:22.920 --> 0:52:28.719 alternative to taverns and brothels, which is ironic given its 0:52:28.719 --> 0:52:29.560 future reputation. 0:52:29.840 --> 0:52:31.200 In the seventies at least. 0:52:31.760 --> 0:52:32.239 Author J. 0:52:32.480 --> 0:52:38.279 William Frost describes them thus in his book Christianity, a 0:52:38.440 --> 0:52:43.240 Social and Cultural History. Sounds interesting, That sounds interesting. 0:52:42.920 --> 0:52:55.200 From the crusadest Yeah, and the rest from the same period. Really, yeah, 0:52:55.200 --> 0:52:55.880 that's true. 0:52:56.120 --> 0:53:00.080 Philanthropists saw the YMCAs as places for wholesome recreation and 0:53:00.120 --> 0:53:04.040 that would preserve youth from the temptations of alcohol, gambling, 0:53:04.120 --> 0:53:07.040 and prostitution, and would promote good citizenship. 0:53:07.120 --> 0:53:08.080 And so, in addition to being. 0:53:08.040 --> 0:53:10.640 A place to gather for these wholesome activities, they also 0:53:10.680 --> 0:53:14.440 provided inexpensive lodging, with one room units containing a bed, 0:53:14.600 --> 0:53:17.359 as well as use of a shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. 0:53:18.080 --> 0:53:21.840 And this sort of became the place for a certain period, 0:53:21.840 --> 0:53:23.880 at least where you landed when you arrived in the 0:53:23.880 --> 0:53:26.040 big city with your big dreams and you were trying 0:53:26.040 --> 0:53:30.680 to figure out more permanent accommodations. These lodgings started to 0:53:30.719 --> 0:53:32.600 disappear at the end of the seventies due to a 0:53:32.640 --> 0:53:35.960 combination of a real estate boom overseen by Mary ed 0:53:36.040 --> 0:53:42.800 Koch and the general social demonization of the poor following 0:53:42.800 --> 0:53:45.680 that Debbie Downer train of thought. It's been noted that 0:53:45.719 --> 0:53:50.280 the song YMCA is a stark reflection of the homeless 0:53:50.280 --> 0:53:54.160 crisis among members of the LGBTQ community in the seventies, 0:53:54.600 --> 0:53:56.960 a time when most were forced out of their homes 0:53:57.040 --> 0:53:59.640 or unable to find employment after coming out of the closet. 0:54:00.360 --> 0:54:02.800 Hence why so many men came to stay at the 0:54:02.880 --> 0:54:05.960 YMCA in the first place. It was a charitable organization 0:54:06.040 --> 0:54:08.040 that offered a warm bed and a shower to these 0:54:08.080 --> 0:54:11.000 people who often had nowhere else to go. The place 0:54:11.200 --> 0:54:14.760 was significantly less freewheeling than the song would have you believe. 0:54:15.400 --> 0:54:17.759 For example, there was a ten pm curfew and no 0:54:17.880 --> 0:54:21.120 access to a cafeteria or any shared social spaces. 0:54:20.760 --> 0:54:21.800 Other than a gym. 0:54:22.320 --> 0:54:25.400 The bathrooms were clean, but like a gym locker room facility. 0:54:26.239 --> 0:54:28.920 One longtime resident of the YMCA in New York City's 0:54:28.960 --> 0:54:31.319 Chelsea neighborhood, the one that inspired the song, would tell 0:54:31.360 --> 0:54:35.520 the website Gothamist there was more supervision of your social life, 0:54:35.600 --> 0:54:37.920 a kind of management as to how you behaved in 0:54:37.960 --> 0:54:40.280 the why than there would be in a commercial rooming house, 0:54:40.760 --> 0:54:42.600 which mostly just wanted to make sure that the rooms 0:54:42.600 --> 0:54:45.919 were rented. He also added that the housekeepers came by 0:54:46.040 --> 0:54:48.520 both the off of you clean sheets and towels, and 0:54:48.600 --> 0:54:50.239 also to keep an eye on you and make sure 0:54:50.280 --> 0:54:51.960 you were alone and not misbehaving. 0:54:52.680 --> 0:54:55.920 Yeah, it's really interesting, Deck Rante about Season of the Witch. 0:54:56.200 --> 0:54:58.600 No you taught It's funny. There's two books about Season 0:54:58.640 --> 0:55:00.520 of the Witch. One about a cult is in Rock 0:55:00.520 --> 0:55:02.160 and Roll. I assume this is the other one. 0:55:02.719 --> 0:55:06.360 The other one, it's about San Francisco from sort of 0:55:06.400 --> 0:55:11.160 the early sixties, well late sort of the fifties eate 0:55:11.239 --> 0:55:15.719 until like it essentially ends with the AIDS crisis. And 0:55:16.560 --> 0:55:19.759 it's interesting to note that despite being sort of the 0:55:19.800 --> 0:55:23.240 punching bag for like a liberal California city gone woke, 0:55:23.760 --> 0:55:27.960 San Francisco was an extremely conservative town based largely on 0:55:28.080 --> 0:55:34.200 Irish and Italian super catholic like dock labor and union 0:55:34.239 --> 0:55:39.480 power really and the sort of spill towards the west 0:55:39.800 --> 0:55:42.239 that made it what it is in the popular imagination 0:55:42.320 --> 0:55:45.360 today really started with the Summer of Love, like that 0:55:45.520 --> 0:55:48.000 was just that was the first wave of an insane 0:55:48.040 --> 0:55:52.080 amount of youth culture up the Beats. Yeah, but I 0:55:52.080 --> 0:55:54.480 think the Beats were less like the Beats didn't have 0:55:54.600 --> 0:55:56.359 I mean, this is this is also an interesting thing 0:55:56.400 --> 0:55:58.960 about San Francisco as far as where it landed in 0:55:58.960 --> 0:56:02.239 the popular culture, because the Beads I don't think, like 0:56:02.440 --> 0:56:04.520 they were on talk shows and stuff like you know, 0:56:04.560 --> 0:56:06.799 you would have seen like Jack Carrek reading on like 0:56:06.840 --> 0:56:10.799 Steve Allen or something, but they weren't radio ubiquitous, like, 0:56:11.480 --> 0:56:14.719 so they didn't have the cultural cachet as far as 0:56:14.800 --> 0:56:17.800 youth culture, I think I think the Beads were largely 0:56:17.840 --> 0:56:20.640 a little bit more of a you know, academic cultural 0:56:20.719 --> 0:56:23.560 intellectual crowd as opposed to just like let's take acid 0:56:23.600 --> 0:56:26.880 and lie in the grass all day. So that westward 0:56:26.920 --> 0:56:29.600 migration of people who like quote unquote didn't fit in 0:56:29.600 --> 0:56:32.520 anywhere else and just wanted to be starts with kind 0:56:32.520 --> 0:56:34.480 of the Summer of Love era. But at the same time, 0:56:34.520 --> 0:56:37.200 San Francisco is not really queer friendly. There was a 0:56:37.200 --> 0:56:41.440 point at which the SFPD was issuing more tickets for 0:56:41.600 --> 0:56:45.319 like public indecency than the NYPD by a factor of 0:56:45.360 --> 0:56:47.200 like ten in the early seventies. 0:56:48.000 --> 0:56:48.440 Wow. 0:56:48.920 --> 0:56:51.160 So I think a lot of it and it's sort 0:56:51.160 --> 0:56:53.239 of this, you know, you can see this sort of 0:56:53.239 --> 0:56:56.879 trickle down effect of like the liberating sixties. The backlash 0:56:56.920 --> 0:56:59.960 of that was maybe kids who were emboldened to start 0:57:00.880 --> 0:57:05.200 displaying their identity more openly on the East Coast found 0:57:05.239 --> 0:57:08.600 it unwelcoming and wound up in a YMCA and then 0:57:08.680 --> 0:57:10.440 just saved up enough money for bus fair to San 0:57:10.480 --> 0:57:13.520 Francisco because they heard that it was changing. But like 0:57:13.880 --> 0:57:16.320 that is not a deep seated part of San Francisco 0:57:16.440 --> 0:57:19.760 culture until this time, you know. 0:57:20.000 --> 0:57:21.880 I mean you talk about the backlash, I mean it 0:57:21.960 --> 0:57:24.920 wasn't this around the time and was seventy eight, I 0:57:24.960 --> 0:57:29.640 want to say, and Harvey Milk was assassinated and George Moscone. 0:57:29.600 --> 0:57:32.520 Uh yeah, that was I mean, Dan White was a 0:57:32.520 --> 0:57:35.200 loser piece of who killed himself and is in hell. 0:57:35.480 --> 0:57:38.880 But I think a lot of that was also a 0:57:38.880 --> 0:57:43.280 reaction to just George Moscone, because Moscone was famously like 0:57:44.360 --> 0:57:48.760 very liberal as opposed to the previous power structures in 0:57:48.760 --> 0:57:52.360 San Francisco. And if I'm remembering correctly from this book, 0:57:52.400 --> 0:57:54.920 he had fired Dan White or like removed him or 0:57:54.960 --> 0:57:58.840 he was like not unelected, like removed from the Board 0:57:58.880 --> 0:58:01.680 of Supervisors, and then he came back. And I think 0:58:03.120 --> 0:58:06.400 Harvey Milk was a convenient target because of what he represented, 0:58:06.400 --> 0:58:09.720 and I believe was literally in the same room as Moscone. 0:58:09.720 --> 0:58:14.080 But I think that killing was less targeted at orientation 0:58:14.240 --> 0:58:16.560 than it was just sort of a general cultural malaise 0:58:16.680 --> 0:58:21.880 of like the straight irishman who saw their their city 0:58:22.240 --> 0:58:23.440 disappearing or whatever. 0:58:24.400 --> 0:58:26.480 Oh that is, that's interesting. I actually don't know a 0:58:26.520 --> 0:58:29.640 whole lot about San Francisco history. I always saw it 0:58:29.680 --> 0:58:32.200 as for a Lingetti and the Beats giving way to. 0:58:33.920 --> 0:58:37.560 Timothy learriacolytes. Yeah, no, I mean it was. It's really 0:58:38.000 --> 0:58:39.720 This book doesn't get into it, but another book I'm 0:58:39.760 --> 0:58:44.160 reading does. It was fully like lawless for a while. 0:58:44.160 --> 0:58:50.040 I mean, vigilante mobs were an incredible thing, like roving 0:58:50.080 --> 0:58:52.800 gang like they were because it was until the nineteen 0:58:52.800 --> 0:58:55.080 o six quake in the fire. The whole city was 0:58:55.120 --> 0:58:57.680 like a tense city that sprung up around the gold Rush, 0:58:57.720 --> 0:59:00.560 So it was all like right right, like shantyuns like 0:59:00.880 --> 0:59:03.680 you know, and these people were just hanging people in 0:59:03.760 --> 0:59:08.080 like the street. And there was one point one famous 0:59:08.160 --> 0:59:10.680 lynching where the governor of California at the time was 0:59:10.720 --> 0:59:13.400 like put out a statement that was like, yes, this 0:59:13.520 --> 0:59:16.120 is good and correct and a message from California that 0:59:16.160 --> 0:59:19.840 we will not tolerate like lawlessness or something insane. 0:59:20.480 --> 0:59:23.760 Well, Heigel, it's been a minute since we've had a 0:59:23.920 --> 0:59:27.000 Heigels and saying conspiracy theory corner, And I feel as 0:59:27.000 --> 0:59:29.120 though you should take this because it has to do 0:59:29.160 --> 0:59:32.520 with the CIA, which is an all real passion point 0:59:32.560 --> 0:59:32.840 for you. 0:59:33.120 --> 0:59:37.400 Oh absolutely, I mean even dovetailing, even even getting aside 0:59:37.400 --> 0:59:40.160 from the fact that they may have started the Canyon 0:59:40.200 --> 0:59:42.200 and Hippie Rock to take the teeth out of the 0:59:42.320 --> 0:59:49.200 genuine new left and historically powerful labor coalition that was 0:59:49.240 --> 0:59:53.680 forming in many places around the country, even putting that 0:59:53.720 --> 0:59:56.800 I believe plausible theory aside. You know, there is documented 0:59:56.800 --> 1:00:00.520 evidence that they spent a sh load of time just 1:00:01.160 --> 1:00:06.000 with people during this period, like the American presidents were 1:00:06.040 --> 1:00:09.680 actually horrified to learn the extent to which the CIA 1:00:09.720 --> 1:00:12.800 had been operating without oversight. And back in the day 1:00:12.840 --> 1:00:14.840 when we used to actually do something about this, this 1:00:14.960 --> 1:00:17.880 was when all these commissions were formed and they were 1:00:17.920 --> 1:00:20.760 like actually sanctioned. But like we know for a fact 1:00:20.760 --> 1:00:23.480 that the CIO is paying guys like Jolly West to 1:00:23.600 --> 1:00:27.000 just post up in hate Ashbury and throw around acid 1:00:27.120 --> 1:00:31.280 and write about what see what happens? Yeah, anyway, So 1:00:31.360 --> 1:00:33.680 that's why I believe that the YMCA is actually a 1:00:33.720 --> 1:00:37.080 front for the CIA. Ooh tell us long long, rambling, 1:00:37.160 --> 1:00:40.600 long wrapping up with people tune back in, and that's 1:00:40.600 --> 1:00:42.560 why I go and the YMCA is a front for 1:00:42.600 --> 1:00:45.080 the CIA anyway. One of the sources for this rumor 1:00:45.160 --> 1:00:49.680 is a British lawyer named Fenton Bresler, tremendously British name, 1:00:49.800 --> 1:00:51.840 who published a book in nineteen eighty nine titled Who 1:00:51.920 --> 1:00:55.200 Killed John Lennon? And in this book he argues that 1:00:55.280 --> 1:00:58.440 Lenin's assassin, Mark David Chapman, was programmed by the CIA 1:00:58.560 --> 1:01:01.959 Manchurian candidate style. This is also a very popular theory 1:01:01.960 --> 1:01:05.960 among fringe conspiracy theorists that a lot of mass shooters 1:01:06.080 --> 1:01:08.600 or serial killers from the quote unquote Golden Age of 1:01:08.680 --> 1:01:11.520 serial killing, which is, believe it or not, an actual thing, 1:01:12.520 --> 1:01:16.480 were like rogue CIA assets. This was going along the 1:01:16.480 --> 1:01:19.360 theory that there were developments starting in the nineteen twenties 1:01:20.040 --> 1:01:22.680 and building into the era when the OSS, the predecessor 1:01:22.720 --> 1:01:24.800 of the CIA, was formed, that there had been some 1:01:24.840 --> 1:01:29.040 of the first psychiatric research into disassociative states as a 1:01:29.080 --> 1:01:33.080 result of trauma, and so their pet theory was they 1:01:33.120 --> 1:01:36.960 would recruit people who had generally been abused, who maybe 1:01:36.960 --> 1:01:40.200 went into the army and as a result of army screening, 1:01:40.320 --> 1:01:44.880 displayed some apparant tendencies, and then they would be institutionalized 1:01:44.920 --> 1:01:49.440 at several California institutions known to have colluded with the CIA, 1:01:50.040 --> 1:01:51.640 and then they would come out a few years later 1:01:51.800 --> 1:01:55.880 and all of the sudden they would just start murdering people. Anyway, 1:01:55.920 --> 1:01:57.280 if you want to read more about that, there's a 1:01:57.320 --> 1:02:01.000 book called Program to Kill by David Allen, who also 1:02:01.080 --> 1:02:03.960 wrote the Laurel Canyon conspiracy theory book, and he died 1:02:04.360 --> 1:02:07.440 in a uh what I deemed to be suspicious. Oh 1:02:07.480 --> 1:02:11.040 they all do. I mean, you know, I was also 1:02:11.080 --> 1:02:14.840 reading about Gary Webbman, like this shit that this country 1:02:14.840 --> 1:02:18.880 did to Gary Webb is honestly conscionable. The guy basically 1:02:18.920 --> 1:02:22.880 uncovered Iran contra and ties between the federal government and 1:02:23.000 --> 1:02:28.760 drug trafficking in south central LA. And like the rest 1:02:28.800 --> 1:02:33.120 of the media came at him like Main Street, like Newsweek, 1:02:33.200 --> 1:02:35.760 and people in the New York Times denounced this guy 1:02:35.960 --> 1:02:39.200 as like, how dare you assail the FBI and the 1:02:39.200 --> 1:02:43.000 integrity of the CIA? And then he mysteriously died alone 1:02:43.160 --> 1:02:49.160 in his house of two self inflicted gunshots allegedly two Yeah, 1:02:49.200 --> 1:02:51.120 crazy bad am Yeah right. 1:02:52.160 --> 1:02:52.320 Uh. 1:02:52.760 --> 1:02:55.800 You know, the FBI killed Martin Luther King, but everyone 1:02:55.840 --> 1:03:00.640 knows that, and the John landis kill those and John 1:03:00.720 --> 1:03:04.160 Land has killed those kids. Yeah, and Vic Morrow, God 1:03:04.200 --> 1:03:07.400 rest his soul. And that about wraps it up for tonight. 1:03:07.400 --> 1:03:12.960 Thanks for listening everyone. Bresler went on to note that 1:03:12.960 --> 1:03:16.080 the YMCA has offices in more than ninety countries, making 1:03:16.120 --> 1:03:19.680 it an ideal front for the CIA. Mark Chapman had 1:03:19.720 --> 1:03:22.640 strong ties to the YMCA throughout his life. An incredible 1:03:22.640 --> 1:03:25.200 sentence I was delighted to just read. He worked as 1:03:25.200 --> 1:03:27.800 a counselor at one YMCA throughout much of the seventies, 1:03:27.800 --> 1:03:29.959 and he stayed at one on the Upper West Side 1:03:30.000 --> 1:03:32.120 when he came to New York to murder John Lennin. 1:03:32.880 --> 1:03:35.640 In all likelihood this is merely coincidence. But there is 1:03:35.720 --> 1:03:38.919 one weird fact that emerged from all of this fringe postulating. 1:03:39.520 --> 1:03:42.880 There's a non profit organization called the United States Youth Council, 1:03:43.000 --> 1:03:45.680 which operated from nineteen forty five to nineteen eighty nine. 1:03:46.400 --> 1:03:49.400 It was a coalition of sixteen organizations, one of which 1:03:49.480 --> 1:03:52.640 was the YMCA. In nineteen sixty seven, The New York 1:03:52.680 --> 1:03:56.200 Times revealed that ninety percent of the United States Youth 1:03:56.240 --> 1:04:00.360 Council funds came from the CIA, which was in turn 1:04:00.440 --> 1:04:04.560 dictating the organization's agenda. Also an incredibly common thing, like 1:04:04.680 --> 1:04:07.240 the CIA has all these shell companies that they funnel 1:04:07.240 --> 1:04:09.080 money through. It's all dog I mean, if even if 1:04:09.120 --> 1:04:10.560 you just want to drill into the they did with 1:04:10.560 --> 1:04:13.960 ASCID as part of mk Ultra, that's all documented. A 1:04:14.000 --> 1:04:17.840 full list of false companies that were receiving CIA money 1:04:17.960 --> 1:04:23.680 to post weird dudes up in secret compartments and record 1:04:23.800 --> 1:04:29.680 acid trips. This country, man, God damn, I know that 1:04:29.800 --> 1:04:34.600 book wal Courier, hair Man Acid Dreams. The CIA LSD 1:04:34.640 --> 1:04:35.560 in the nineteen sixties. 1:04:35.640 --> 1:04:38.160 That is as that they be gone. 1:04:38.640 --> 1:04:41.920 No, No, that's two people. It's like the definitive text 1:04:41.960 --> 1:04:45.000 on the on the the CIO Martine Lee and Bruce Shalen. Yeah, 1:04:45.000 --> 1:04:47.120 that is the the definitive text on this kind of 1:04:47.360 --> 1:04:49.840 and it is horrifying. I had to put it down 1:04:49.920 --> 1:04:51.640 for like two weeks because I got to the part 1:04:51.680 --> 1:04:55.520 where in one of these California mental institutions, God, it 1:04:55.600 --> 1:04:58.080 might have been Stanford. Stanford has been involved in a 1:04:58.080 --> 1:05:02.439 lot of this. Yeah. They he gave a mentally ill 1:05:02.480 --> 1:05:05.919 person or possibly one of the like alcoholics and drug 1:05:05.920 --> 1:05:08.920 addicts they were also all testing this. They gave him 1:05:08.920 --> 1:05:12.760 a local anesthetic in his brain and then they just 1:05:13.400 --> 1:05:16.160 carved into his brain while he was conscious and tripping 1:05:16.640 --> 1:05:18.960 and asked him just interviewed him about the process. 1:05:19.160 --> 1:05:20.360 Did he live? I don't know. 1:05:21.280 --> 1:05:26.040 Detail was not elaborated upon, I imagine not unless they 1:05:26.040 --> 1:05:29.000 were careful about it, which spoiler alert they rarely were. 1:05:30.160 --> 1:05:34.240 Back to disco. Alex Heigel found dead alone keep gunshot 1:05:34.240 --> 1:05:38.160 wounds to the chest with a military grid handgun. Sources 1:05:38.200 --> 1:05:42.080 say he had been troubled recently and his whole life. 1:05:43.200 --> 1:05:46.040 A message was found scrawled in his own blood, Jazz 1:05:48.400 --> 1:05:53.920 that's jazz baby, that's Nascar baby. Yeah. Terry Gross interviews 1:05:53.920 --> 1:05:57.000 the Cia spook who did it next? On Fresh Air? 1:05:58.040 --> 1:06:00.440 It's like a voice modulator guard being like just broken 1:06:00.440 --> 1:06:02.760 news apartment and who was just sitting there? Like listening 1:06:02.760 --> 1:06:06.520 to Albert Iler was really easy anyway, you just had 1:06:06.560 --> 1:06:09.080 a big mouth and that stupid podcast is you know, 1:06:09.120 --> 1:06:12.720 we just got cigrevete. Terry Gross lips extremely close to Mike. 1:06:13.240 --> 1:06:16.720 Thank you. This has been Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. 1:06:19.960 --> 1:06:22.280 A lot of good riffs, good riffs on this one. 1:06:22.360 --> 1:06:26.840 Yes, back to disco, Yes, Yes, Smithers with the gun mean, 1:06:27.240 --> 1:06:28.040 big smile. 1:06:28.680 --> 1:06:29.760 Everybody's happy. 1:06:30.720 --> 1:06:35.080 Ah. The ymca in question that inspired the song was 1:06:35.200 --> 1:06:38.880 arguably the most famous, know it as the mcbernie ymca. 1:06:38.920 --> 1:06:41.360 It was located on twenty third Street between seventh and 1:06:41.360 --> 1:06:44.040 eighth Avenue in the Chelsea district of New York City, 1:06:44.560 --> 1:06:47.520 which is adjacent to Greenwich Village. It's directly across from 1:06:47.520 --> 1:06:51.920 the Chelsea Hotel where the slightly richer bohemians stand. Leonard 1:06:51.960 --> 1:06:56.680 Cohen and Jennis Joplin and the rest stayed there. And 1:06:56.760 --> 1:06:59.880 yeah and Sid Vicious killed Nancy there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:07:00.000 --> 1:07:03.680 The McBurnie WYMCA had a storied history. It was there 1:07:03.720 --> 1:07:07.800 that Charles Merrill met Stockbrooker Edmund Lynch to form Merrill Lynch. 1:07:07.960 --> 1:07:08.760 Yeah, it sucks. 1:07:09.200 --> 1:07:12.040 I didn't dig deeper into that. Those guys weird place 1:07:12.120 --> 1:07:14.640 for that to farm. Other notable members who stayed at 1:07:14.640 --> 1:07:17.760 the McBurney YMCA have included Andy Warhol, Edward Alby, who 1:07:17.800 --> 1:07:19.320 who's afraid of Virginia Wolf, and. 1:07:19.360 --> 1:07:24.280 Al Pacino his second appearance then fought Alpacino. 1:07:24.560 --> 1:07:28.240 And we should also add village person Randy Jones, the Cowboy, 1:07:28.360 --> 1:07:29.240 also stayed there. 1:07:30.240 --> 1:07:31.480 The story goes. 1:07:31.280 --> 1:07:33.600 That the village people were leaving a photography session on 1:07:33.600 --> 1:07:36.640 twenty third Street nearby in nineteen seventy seven when they 1:07:36.680 --> 1:07:41.000 passed the McBurney YMCA, and their manager, Jacques Moraley asked, 1:07:41.000 --> 1:07:43.640 in his French way, what. 1:07:43.920 --> 1:07:46.160 I can't do? What is this is not its Italian? 1:07:46.200 --> 1:07:50.600 What is it is? No? I can't do cluse So 1:07:50.600 --> 1:07:56.600 what is a whim anyway? Yeah? Actually if he had, 1:07:56.760 --> 1:07:59.920 if well, it would be in fringe of emsa ah, 1:08:00.040 --> 1:08:09.000 because you say im. 1:08:05.560 --> 1:08:08.520 In David Hodo's recollection we told him why. It was 1:08:08.560 --> 1:08:10.280 a place where you could go when you first came 1:08:10.320 --> 1:08:11.880 to New York and you didn't have any money. 1:08:12.080 --> 1:08:13.360 You could stay there for very little. 1:08:13.800 --> 1:08:16.320 And of course someone joked, yeah, but don't bend over 1:08:16.400 --> 1:08:19.559 in the showers, and Jacques bless his heart, said, I 1:08:19.640 --> 1:08:21.120 will write a song about these. 1:08:23.560 --> 1:08:23.640 That. 1:08:24.240 --> 1:08:26.800 This is funny to me? Is he seeing you Americans? 1:08:26.840 --> 1:08:32.519 Do you out of poverty and desperation? The poetry of 1:08:32.560 --> 1:08:41.599 the dispossessed? They No, some of the best facial work 1:08:41.640 --> 1:08:42.559 I've ever seen. You do. 1:08:43.040 --> 1:08:47.240 I wish you could see, but the eyebrows fuse. 1:08:48.680 --> 1:08:53.519 Imse. Your mom is a French teacher, right, yeah, sure 1:08:53.640 --> 1:08:54.679 is Yeah? 1:08:54.880 --> 1:08:55.559 Are you fluent? 1:08:55.680 --> 1:08:57.840 Had to take French instead of piano ruined my life? 1:08:58.240 --> 1:09:00.640 Oh no, wonder you hate the French so much? Associated 1:09:00.680 --> 1:09:02.840 with things you could have done. I associated with the 1:09:03.240 --> 1:09:06.720 lost potential of being Keith Jarrett. Yes, not to say 1:09:06.720 --> 1:09:10.559 that I would have been, but who's to say. Heigel 1:09:10.640 --> 1:09:24.280 goes on anti French rant. So I hated it. Took 1:09:24.320 --> 1:09:27.559 it all through high school, and then I got to 1:09:27.600 --> 1:09:29.720 college and I was like, I'll learn Italian. That's my 1:09:29.800 --> 1:09:34.160 mother tongue. And may I tell you absolutely all of 1:09:34.160 --> 1:09:36.160 the brain cells I should have been using to conjugate 1:09:36.200 --> 1:09:39.960 Italian and become fluent. I used to learn jazz bass, 1:09:40.520 --> 1:09:44.439 so consequently I speak nothing other than English and music, 1:09:45.600 --> 1:09:48.240 which they say is the universal language, but that's actually 1:09:48.280 --> 1:09:50.400 not true. One of the other compositions that we saw 1:09:50.400 --> 1:09:52.920 at this thing the other night was this alumni who's 1:09:52.960 --> 1:09:57.759 from He immigrated from Iran, and he was talking about 1:09:57.840 --> 1:10:00.439 how much of it he's at UC. He's at the 1:10:00.439 --> 1:10:05.599 Herbalbert School, which is usc main campus, and a lot 1:10:05.640 --> 1:10:09.479 of his work is actually trying to transpose things like 1:10:10.400 --> 1:10:12.519 things from the Middle Eastern and South Asian diaspora are 1:10:12.680 --> 1:10:16.920 like quartertones that have no conventional notation in Western system 1:10:17.040 --> 1:10:21.800 and rhythms that don't really make sense across bars. So 1:10:21.840 --> 1:10:24.320 he had this string quartet that premiered last night and 1:10:24.360 --> 1:10:26.960 it was super cool, but like you could see people 1:10:26.960 --> 1:10:29.960 in the crowd wincing at some of these really close, 1:10:30.120 --> 1:10:33.920 weird dissonant intervals because they don't we don't have those 1:10:33.920 --> 1:10:36.360 intervals in Western music, closest thing you get as a 1:10:36.400 --> 1:10:39.120 half tone, but string players can do it. So one 1:10:39.160 --> 1:10:41.639 of our violin faculty was lead violin in this, and 1:10:41.720 --> 1:10:46.439 you know, she has incredible pitch, but it was so 1:10:46.720 --> 1:10:49.559 rankling people in the crowd to be like, ah, quarter tone, 1:10:50.479 --> 1:10:52.200 you know, and something Philip Glass talked about when he 1:10:52.200 --> 1:10:54.559 was transcribing Ravi Shankar stuff. He was like, I tried 1:10:54.560 --> 1:10:57.120 to notate that stuff in bars, and none of it 1:10:57.160 --> 1:10:59.840 made sense until I removed bar lines and just thought 1:10:59.880 --> 1:11:04.640 of everything as rhythmic unit like cells. So music's not 1:11:04.680 --> 1:11:08.040 the universal language, I hate to tell you, guys, actually 1:11:08.120 --> 1:11:10.960 a ton of international variants except for the pentatonic scale 1:11:11.000 --> 1:11:13.000 that sticks around. We all love the We love the 1:11:13.040 --> 1:11:16.599 pentatonic scale, don't we, folks. Beautiful it's a beautiful scale. 1:11:16.640 --> 1:11:19.519 Five notes, friend of the pod, the pentatonic scale, end 1:11:19.520 --> 1:11:25.920 of the pod. The minor pentatonic major pentatonic is less good. 1:11:27.600 --> 1:11:29.760 I'm practicing fingerpicking patterns right now. Can you hear that? 1:11:29.800 --> 1:11:29.880 On? 1:11:30.040 --> 1:11:33.240 Very softly? Unplugged the electric guitar on my Oh no, 1:11:33.360 --> 1:11:38.240 I can? Yeah, okay, disco. 1:11:41.200 --> 1:11:43.240 So the French guy wanted to write a song about 1:11:43.360 --> 1:11:46.559 poor young men going to stay at the YMCA. That's 1:11:46.600 --> 1:11:49.720 where we're at right now. They were walking by the YMCA. 1:11:49.960 --> 1:11:53.080 He said, what's this the village person who stayed there? 1:11:53.360 --> 1:11:56.160 Randy Jones? So, oh yeah, I used to stay there, 1:11:56.200 --> 1:11:57.840 and the kind of gave him the deal about what 1:11:57.920 --> 1:12:00.920 it was, and he said, I took there three or 1:12:00.920 --> 1:12:03.280 four times in nineteen seventy seven and he loved it. 1:12:03.560 --> 1:12:05.920 He was fascinated by a place where a person could 1:12:06.000 --> 1:12:09.800 work out with waits, play basketball, swim, take classes and 1:12:09.840 --> 1:12:13.000 get a room. Plus with Jacques being gay. I had 1:12:13.040 --> 1:12:14.840 a lot of friends I worked out with there who 1:12:14.880 --> 1:12:17.559 were in the adult film industry, and he was impressed 1:12:17.560 --> 1:12:20.240 by meeting people he had seen in the videos and magazines. 1:12:20.760 --> 1:12:24.080 Those visits with me planted a seed in him. Oh raising, 1:12:25.080 --> 1:12:28.000 then that's how he got the idea for YMCA, by 1:12:28.040 --> 1:12:30.040 literally going to the YMCA. 1:12:30.080 --> 1:12:35.240 You know they say, never meet your heroes. Yummy, yummy, yummy. 1:12:35.479 --> 1:12:43.080 Oh God, I've got love in an orifice or two three. 1:12:44.600 --> 1:12:47.320 You're giving me the more signal you already keep going, No, 1:12:47.439 --> 1:12:53.040 I'm counting. Oh okay, here we go. What do we got? Yeah, 1:12:53.120 --> 1:12:57.400 vam vamp. Yeah, do more stuff about anal sex that'll 1:12:57.400 --> 1:12:59.320 play well in Des Moines. 1:12:59.439 --> 1:13:00.960 Yeah, play good and Mooksbury. 1:13:03.800 --> 1:13:05.720 We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be 1:13:05.840 --> 1:13:08.639 right back with more too much information in just a moment. 1:13:20.400 --> 1:13:22.479 The song Yma It was written at the tail end 1:13:22.520 --> 1:13:25.040 of sessions for the Village People's third album. When they 1:13:25.040 --> 1:13:27.759 realized they were coming up short and needing what David 1:13:27.800 --> 1:13:31.280 Hodo would recall one more song as filler. Jacques wrote 1:13:31.360 --> 1:13:34.720 YMCA in about twenty minutes, the melody, the chorus, the outline, 1:13:34.920 --> 1:13:36.599 and then he gave it to Victor Willis, the lead 1:13:36.640 --> 1:13:38.880 singer of the band, and said, fill in the rest. 1:13:39.400 --> 1:13:41.360 That was a bit skeptical about some of our hits, 1:13:41.400 --> 1:13:43.679 but the minute I heard YMCA, I knew we had 1:13:43.680 --> 1:13:47.519 something special because it sounded like a commercial, and everyone 1:13:47.640 --> 1:13:48.400 likes commercials. 1:13:49.960 --> 1:13:50.439 Know about that? 1:13:51.439 --> 1:13:52.559 Yeah, man, Okay. 1:13:52.640 --> 1:13:55.360 The narrative that Willis put together is about a young 1:13:55.400 --> 1:13:58.479 man who's down on his luck and looking for a 1:13:58.520 --> 1:14:02.080 place to stay. The narrators trying to cheer this guy up, 1:14:02.160 --> 1:14:04.120 telling him I was once in your shoes. 1:14:04.439 --> 1:14:05.240 Willis says, this. 1:14:05.200 --> 1:14:07.840 Whole story comes from a very personal experience. He said, 1:14:08.280 --> 1:14:10.400 I would go to the Why to pick myself up. 1:14:10.520 --> 1:14:12.800 Then I'd go back home and get ready to get 1:14:12.840 --> 1:14:13.599 back to my life. 1:14:14.600 --> 1:14:21.599 I have no idea what that means, but what is that? Okay, man, No, 1:14:21.680 --> 1:14:24.840 that's weird. That's a weird thing to say. As we've 1:14:24.880 --> 1:14:28.400 mentioned so many people. The lead singer of the band 1:14:28.479 --> 1:14:32.000 who wrote the lyrics, not least of which maintain that 1:14:32.320 --> 1:14:36.120 it can be read as just a wholesome celebration of 1:14:36.160 --> 1:14:38.559 the Young Men's Christian Association. You know, it can be 1:14:38.560 --> 1:14:40.519 read as a celebration of gay culture or of the 1:14:40.560 --> 1:14:43.840 working man. Willis doesn't mind that it's been embraced by 1:14:43.880 --> 1:14:46.200 the LGBT community, but he does say it was intended 1:14:46.200 --> 1:14:49.680 as quote a song for everyone. He related it to 1:14:49.800 --> 1:14:52.519 YMC on Buchanan Street in San Francisco, just blocks away 1:14:52.520 --> 1:14:54.080 from where he grew up. As he says in a 1:14:54.120 --> 1:14:58.320 twenty seventeen interview with NewsCorp dot Au, YMCA was not 1:14:58.320 --> 1:14:59.920 written to be a gay song because of the sim 1:15:00.200 --> 1:15:03.320 fact I'm not gay. I wrote it about hanging out 1:15:03.320 --> 1:15:05.960 in urban neighborhoods in my youth. You can hang out 1:15:06.000 --> 1:15:07.840 with all the boys was a term about me and 1:15:07.880 --> 1:15:11.000 my friends playing basketball at the why the boy. I 1:15:11.080 --> 1:15:12.800 wanted to write a strong song and they could fit 1:15:12.840 --> 1:15:16.040 anyone's lifestyle. I'm happy the gay community adopted it as 1:15:16.080 --> 1:15:19.360 their anthem. I have no qualms with that. It's so 1:15:19.520 --> 1:15:22.000 funny the way that that kind of evolves. Man Like 1:15:22.040 --> 1:15:26.240 there was there's some blues book where they talk about 1:15:26.920 --> 1:15:32.639 being like slang for a women's genitals and like these 1:15:33.160 --> 1:15:35.680 you know this writer or a musician or something was 1:15:35.720 --> 1:15:38.680 talking about being like completely taken aback. When he went 1:15:38.720 --> 1:15:40.360 to the South the first time, was traveling around with 1:15:40.400 --> 1:15:42.439 Muddy Waters, and Muddy Waters was talking about how much 1:15:42.439 --> 1:15:46.200 he loved eating cor Ah. They were like, I beg 1:15:46.240 --> 1:15:48.599 your guam partner. He was like, yeah, you know, like 1:15:49.400 --> 1:15:55.439 dining at the y. They like that means something very different, Bud. Anyway, 1:15:55.600 --> 1:15:57.559 I was just hanging out, you know with my gay 1:15:57.600 --> 1:15:59.479 fellows who I had a gay time with, and we 1:15:59.479 --> 1:16:02.280 would just josh each other and jerk each other around, 1:16:02.360 --> 1:16:06.320 and they would come over and I would come over 1:16:06.640 --> 1:16:10.640 or around and inside I would come inside and we 1:16:10.680 --> 1:16:13.960 would just have a gay old time. Sorry, you're looking 1:16:14.040 --> 1:16:18.960 less and less amused. But then in September twenty twenty, 1:16:19.320 --> 1:16:24.759 things changed for mister Willis. Apparently, in the midst of Lockdown, 1:16:24.800 --> 1:16:27.120 he was fuming over the reputation that his song earned 1:16:27.640 --> 1:16:30.200 and decided to do something a little about it. 1:16:30.439 --> 1:16:33.240 He learned how to Google during Lockdown, and he didn't 1:16:33.320 --> 1:16:34.080 like what he saw. 1:16:34.240 --> 1:16:37.080 He posted the following note to his Facebook page, notice 1:16:37.080 --> 1:16:46.240 about ymca okay, misleading. There would be like a community 1:16:46.280 --> 1:16:49.680 note on Twitter not notice not actually from the CYMCI 1:16:50.640 --> 1:16:53.320 quote hammered to a tree, have to a church door 1:16:54.880 --> 1:17:00.800 Lutherian thess Yeah, the theses quote news and news and 1:17:00.960 --> 1:17:04.200 Twitter trending of YMCA is off the chart right now 1:17:04.240 --> 1:17:08.320 with false accusations about the song. Could have used another pass. 1:17:08.360 --> 1:17:11.920 But okay, but as I've said numerous times before, parentheses, 1:17:11.960 --> 1:17:14.640 and this was proven in federal court. I wrote one 1:17:14.760 --> 1:17:17.080 hundred percent of the lyrics to IMCA, so I ought 1:17:17.080 --> 1:17:19.720 to know what my song is about. YMCA is one 1:17:19.720 --> 1:17:21.920 of the most iconic songs in the world. I will 1:17:22.000 --> 1:17:25.160 not stand idle and allow it to be defamed. Therefore, 1:17:25.240 --> 1:17:28.040 I will sue the next media organization or anyone else 1:17:28.120 --> 1:17:32.000 that falsely suggests YMCA is somehow about illicit gay sex. 1:17:32.680 --> 1:17:34.920 Get your minds out of the gutter, please, it is 1:17:34.960 --> 1:17:39.360 not about that. Worthwhile noting that gay marriage had been 1:17:39.680 --> 1:17:42.519 legal for about eight years at this point, so weird 1:17:42.600 --> 1:17:46.240 definition of illicit. My guy, No, it wasn't the first 1:17:46.240 --> 1:17:47.240 one in twenty twelve. 1:17:47.280 --> 1:17:49.360 I think a Supreme Court was twenty fifteen. 1:17:49.880 --> 1:17:52.960 All right, And again this coming from the guy who 1:17:52.960 --> 1:17:56.559 did you know, macho man, and in the navy, see 1:17:56.560 --> 1:17:58.840 if we can parse some innuendo. And in the navy, 1:17:59.080 --> 1:18:02.040 it's a good point. Where can you find pleasure? Search 1:18:02.080 --> 1:18:04.360 the world for treasure? Where can you begin to make 1:18:04.400 --> 1:18:06.960 all your dreams come true? Where can you learn to fly, 1:18:07.640 --> 1:18:11.840 play in sports and skin dive? Okay, come on, sign 1:18:11.920 --> 1:18:14.040 up for the big band, or sit in the grand 1:18:14.120 --> 1:18:17.960 stand when your team and others meet. In the navy, 1:18:18.479 --> 1:18:21.519 can't you see we need a hand in the navy? 1:18:21.880 --> 1:18:24.639 Come on and join your fellow man. They want you, 1:18:24.920 --> 1:18:27.400 they want you, They want you as a new recruit. 1:18:27.840 --> 1:18:30.400 Don't you hesitate? There is no need to wait. They're 1:18:30.439 --> 1:18:34.600 signing up new seamen fast. Oh my god, maybe you 1:18:34.640 --> 1:18:36.800 are too young to join up today. But don't you 1:18:36.840 --> 1:18:39.040 worry about a thing, for I'm sure there will always 1:18:39.080 --> 1:18:41.360 be a good navy protecting the land and the sea. 1:18:41.800 --> 1:18:45.720 Absolutely dog scansion and slant rhyme. What are the parenthetical 1:18:45.760 --> 1:18:48.880 insertions in this song? After they want You? Is oceanography? 1:18:48.920 --> 1:18:51.800 What you kidding? I'm not? And then it simply just 1:18:51.920 --> 1:18:55.360 repeats all of those aforementioned lyrics. So you know, let's 1:18:55.400 --> 1:18:59.600 just go to Machaman now and see what we got. Also, misinterpreted. 1:19:00.320 --> 1:19:01.760 I only know the chorus. 1:19:01.640 --> 1:19:05.840 Body want to feel my body, body. Then there were 1:19:05.840 --> 1:19:10.360 parenthetical interjections from the chorus, such as baby, such a thrill, 1:19:10.439 --> 1:19:13.160 my body want to touch my body, it's too much 1:19:13.200 --> 1:19:16.160 my body, check it out my body. Don't you doubt 1:19:16.240 --> 1:19:20.160 my body talking about my body checking out my body. 1:19:21.520 --> 1:19:23.560 Everyone wants to be a macho macho man, to have 1:19:23.600 --> 1:19:27.040 a kind of body always in demand. Jogging in the mornings, 1:19:27.240 --> 1:19:31.559 go man, go, workouts in the health spa, muscles grow. 1:19:33.479 --> 1:19:36.320 You best believe me, he's a macho man. Glad he 1:19:36.439 --> 1:19:42.120 took you down with anyone you can Humm, it's so 1:19:42.240 --> 1:19:46.000 hot my body. Love to pop my body. You'll adore 1:19:46.040 --> 1:19:48.120 my body, Come explore my body. 1:19:50.560 --> 1:19:54.200 Well, it's not totally clear who the song's dressing. 1:19:54.640 --> 1:19:56.920 You can tell him macho. He has a funky walk. 1:19:57.160 --> 1:20:00.599 His western shirts and leather always looks so boss funky 1:20:00.640 --> 1:20:03.559 with his body. He's a king. Call him mister ego. 1:20:03.840 --> 1:20:08.080 Dig his chains. Have your own lifestyle. Every man ought 1:20:08.120 --> 1:20:10.360 to be a macho macho man to live a life 1:20:10.360 --> 1:20:14.600 of freedom. MACHOs make a stand, have your own lifestyles 1:20:14.600 --> 1:20:18.479 and ideals. Possess the strength of confidence that's the skill. 1:20:19.720 --> 1:20:22.240 You can best believe that he's a macho man. He's 1:20:22.280 --> 1:20:25.720 the special godson in anybody's land. I've got to be 1:20:25.760 --> 1:20:30.160 a macho parenthetical. Dig the hair on my chest. Macho 1:20:30.240 --> 1:20:34.960 macho man, parenthetical, see my big thick mustache. I've got 1:20:35.000 --> 1:20:39.759 to be a macho parenthetical. Dig broad shoulders. Yeah, macho 1:20:39.800 --> 1:20:43.840 macho man, parenthetical, dig my muscles. This man is either 1:20:43.840 --> 1:20:46.720 in the closet so far, or he is one of 1:20:46.800 --> 1:20:50.439 the stupidest beings to ever grace God's green earth, and 1:20:50.720 --> 1:20:54.080 everyone else involved in this was just guffawing behind his back. 1:20:54.120 --> 1:20:56.960 Those are the only two plausible explanations. Or its just 1:20:57.000 --> 1:20:59.200 denied till you die. I mean, I guess that's fair. 1:20:59.400 --> 1:21:02.519 Is he? What's is he? He was? His name Willis 1:21:02.760 --> 1:21:06.160 h Victor willis see Catholic son of a Baptist preacher. 1:21:06.240 --> 1:21:10.360 There it is h anyway, son of a Baptist preacher. 1:21:10.400 --> 1:21:13.920 That explains everything. I retract all of my other postulations 1:21:14.120 --> 1:21:19.400 for legal reasons. Career Dave Hodo, the construction worker the 1:21:19.520 --> 1:21:23.400 Cat had a different take. Victor Willis Ymca certainly has 1:21:23.439 --> 1:21:25.920 a gay origin, he told Spin. That's what Jacques was 1:21:25.920 --> 1:21:27.920 thinking when he wrote it because our first album was 1:21:27.920 --> 1:21:30.559 possibly the gayest album ever. I mean, look at us. 1:21:30.760 --> 1:21:33.160 We were a gay group. So was the song written 1:21:33.160 --> 1:21:36.680 to celebrate gay men at the YMCA? Yes, absolutely, and 1:21:36.760 --> 1:21:39.800 gay people love it regardless of the demographic it's aimed at. 1:21:40.000 --> 1:21:44.679 Randy Jones, the Cowboy, the Demon, the Quiet One made 1:21:44.680 --> 1:21:47.640 this important point to gold Mine to gold Mine. Why 1:21:47.640 --> 1:21:49.679 do I say that like Matt Berry made this important 1:21:49.680 --> 1:21:53.720 point to gold Mine gold Mine? We were always very 1:21:53.760 --> 1:21:56.240 positive about our energy and what we did. We never 1:21:56.240 --> 1:21:59.519 sang about broken hearts, lost love or shattered dreams. We 1:21:59.520 --> 1:22:02.280 always don't. With positive things in a very positive place 1:22:02.320 --> 1:22:05.719 is the YMCA. I think people had forgotten about whys 1:22:05.760 --> 1:22:09.240 and they're positive qualities. They provided food, shelter and spiritual 1:22:09.280 --> 1:22:12.439 encouragement to a lot of people for more than a century. Yes, 1:22:12.920 --> 1:22:15.559 they provide excellent physical programs for young and old, and 1:22:15.560 --> 1:22:19.320 it's a very positive institution. That's why we decided to 1:22:19.360 --> 1:22:23.439 sing about it. That's like corn flakes or wheedies or 1:22:23.479 --> 1:22:25.599 something made by dude trying to get people to stop 1:22:25.680 --> 1:22:30.880 cranking their hogs. Yeah. Yeah. The video, which was at 1:22:30.880 --> 1:22:33.320 the time rare for pre MTV act, was filmed at 1:22:33.360 --> 1:22:36.600 the McBurney YMCA on twenty third Street, the same facility 1:22:36.680 --> 1:22:39.800 that inspired the idea also as well as the west 1:22:39.800 --> 1:22:45.120 Side piers, Hudson River Park and a gay club called Ramrod. 1:22:46.120 --> 1:22:50.240 I'll just leave that as anything, but sadly you cannot 1:22:50.280 --> 1:22:52.880 stay at this YMCA anymore. It was closed in two 1:22:52.880 --> 1:22:55.479 thousand and two and moved to a fifteenth Street. Its 1:22:55.479 --> 1:22:57.719 ground floor was it David Barton Gym for a while, 1:22:57.840 --> 1:23:00.880 and then it was a Crunch Fitness. Above it are 1:23:00.920 --> 1:23:04.080 boutique condos, the large of which actually encompasses the old 1:23:04.080 --> 1:23:05.920 basketball court with a running track. 1:23:05.960 --> 1:23:10.600 Above affordable housing is now multimillion dollar apartments. 1:23:10.840 --> 1:23:16.000 Ah that's great. Yeah, you had to read it. Blood 1:23:16.000 --> 1:23:17.640 would have started running out of my nose had I 1:23:17.640 --> 1:23:22.320 started it. Per The New York Times, imposing steel rafters 1:23:22.360 --> 1:23:25.479 and soaring twenty nine foot ceilings there hark back to 1:23:25.520 --> 1:23:27.800 a time when the space was used as a gymnasium 1:23:27.840 --> 1:23:30.640 and an indoor running track. It is returning to the 1:23:30.680 --> 1:23:33.519 market with a fourteen point five million asking price and 1:23:33.600 --> 1:23:37.599 monthly carrying charges totaling eight thousand, eight hundred and seventy 1:23:37.600 --> 1:23:38.640 three dollars. 1:23:42.640 --> 1:23:46.799 As we mentioned, YMCA appeared on Village People's nineteen seventy 1:23:46.840 --> 1:23:50.080 eight album called Cruisin. 1:23:51.120 --> 1:23:57.720 Cruisin. What do you think about that? 1:23:57.800 --> 1:24:01.200 The fuck? More? Really? Come on? This guy? Willis like, 1:24:01.200 --> 1:24:03.799 you're how old? Does he? Man? Make peace with yourself, 1:24:03.880 --> 1:24:05.760 Like Jesus Christ, the. 1:24:05.800 --> 1:24:07.760 Village people saw, the song is no more than an 1:24:07.760 --> 1:24:11.080 album filler. But Neil Bogart, the president of Casablanca Records, 1:24:11.080 --> 1:24:13.880 their label, saw its potential and made the decision to 1:24:13.920 --> 1:24:16.160 push it, push it real good. 1:24:17.280 --> 1:24:20.320 He's seventy three, He's conceivably got a number of years. 1:24:20.360 --> 1:24:23.800 But like Jesus Christ, man, you know, get correct with. 1:24:23.800 --> 1:24:26.120 God, or at least try pegging. 1:24:28.800 --> 1:24:32.800 Oh, one of your better ones? Question with all the 1:24:33.439 --> 1:24:37.920 discourse around stealing valor these days around our boys, you know, 1:24:37.960 --> 1:24:39.160 and the. 1:24:38.800 --> 1:24:42.000 Oh you saw his picture when he's in a decorated. 1:24:41.640 --> 1:24:45.520 Military like a Navy admiral's uniform with like the obscene 1:24:45.600 --> 1:24:50.280 number of inscrutable fabric patches, like he looks like a doffy, 1:24:50.880 --> 1:24:54.200 Yes he does? Or idio mean yeah or idiot yeah exactly, 1:24:54.360 --> 1:24:56.200 idio meme would have been rocking the kilt. 1:24:56.960 --> 1:24:57.679 That's true. 1:24:58.960 --> 1:25:04.320 Wow, man, this is such a fascinating snapshot of America 1:25:04.400 --> 1:25:08.360 back when you could steal valor safely and have an 1:25:08.400 --> 1:25:11.519 incredibly closeted song hit the charts and then just deny 1:25:11.640 --> 1:25:14.160 it the whole weight of the bank and back. And 1:25:14.240 --> 1:25:17.880 he was married to Claire huxtaballt. Yeah, good god, what 1:25:17.960 --> 1:25:20.559 a what a CV Victor Willis. I salute an Era, 1:25:20.760 --> 1:25:28.960 I salute you, you absolute mad lad in America. 1:25:29.120 --> 1:25:31.759 YMCA spent a full half year on the charts, peaking 1:25:31.800 --> 1:25:35.560 in number two on Billboard for three weeks in February 1:25:35.640 --> 1:25:38.240 nineteen seventy nine, being held off the top spot by 1:25:38.560 --> 1:25:41.040 La Freak By She thank God, and then for two 1:25:41.120 --> 1:25:44.840 weeks behind another disco burner, Ooh not as good though. 1:25:44.880 --> 1:25:45.799 Do you think I'm sexy? 1:25:45.840 --> 1:25:45.960 Boy? 1:25:46.040 --> 1:25:47.360 Rod Stewart, That's song blows? 1:25:47.520 --> 1:25:52.000 No, it doesn't. That song goes? What incorrect tweeted us. 1:25:53.200 --> 1:25:55.240 We have a poll, does do you think I'm sexy? 1:25:55.280 --> 1:25:59.320 Blow or go? A question Alton asked about the village people. 1:26:02.120 --> 1:26:04.479 I'm kind of shocked that I've never heard that expression blow, 1:26:04.680 --> 1:26:05.920 Like that should be our that's going to. 1:26:05.920 --> 1:26:07.759 Be our new blower go, that's a new segment. 1:26:07.840 --> 1:26:11.240 Yeah, sure, we could be totally closeted. Weird guys stealing 1:26:11.320 --> 1:26:12.280 queer valor. 1:26:12.920 --> 1:26:16.240 Contribute five dollars to the KOFE if you think it blows, 1:26:16.320 --> 1:26:17.719 or ten dollars at the Ghost. 1:26:19.080 --> 1:26:20.880 No, I actually do like that song. I think it's 1:26:21.160 --> 1:26:23.559 uh that it sounds like Abba. That's why I like it. 1:26:24.720 --> 1:26:27.439 What I mean, No, it's not good for it's not 1:26:27.560 --> 1:26:32.120 good for like faces raw, but it's it sounds like Abba. 1:26:32.439 --> 1:26:34.040 I just think you're wrong. 1:26:34.160 --> 1:26:38.880 I just think that sounds terrible, you know, all right. 1:26:37.439 --> 1:26:39.880 All right, agree to disagree, my friend. That's what makes 1:26:39.880 --> 1:26:40.679 this country great. 1:26:40.920 --> 1:26:42.679 Yes, this makes this podcast great. 1:26:43.200 --> 1:26:47.720 The YMCA single sold the report of twelve million copies worldwide. 1:26:47.720 --> 1:26:51.559 That's insane, becoming especially popular in the United Kingdom or 1:26:51.560 --> 1:26:54.439 it stayed at the top spot for three weeks and 1:26:54.520 --> 1:26:57.000 in Australia, where it was number one for five weeks. 1:26:58.000 --> 1:27:01.000 The song's success is due in part the awesome horn 1:27:01.120 --> 1:27:04.320 arrangement from Horace Ott, who did the same for people 1:27:04.360 --> 1:27:07.800 like Aretha Franklin, That King, Cole, Joe Cocker and Earth 1:27:07.840 --> 1:27:10.640 the Kit And he also wrote Don't let Me Be Misunderstood? 1:27:10.920 --> 1:27:13.000 Made famous by being on your point of view and 1:27:13.080 --> 1:27:16.519 music taste, Nina Simone or for me the animals. 1:27:16.840 --> 1:27:19.479 Yeah, yeah, didn't I go on a whole rant about 1:27:19.560 --> 1:27:21.639 Nina Simone and the animals in that song. I believe 1:27:21.680 --> 1:27:21.960 I did. 1:27:22.000 --> 1:27:24.880 It was, Yes, it was for I think it was 1:27:24.920 --> 1:27:26.120 for the Moby episode. 1:27:26.200 --> 1:27:27.679 Yeah, it was about sampling. 1:27:27.760 --> 1:27:28.439 Yes, sampling. 1:27:28.600 --> 1:27:33.719 Horace At also still alive. That means ninety one. Oh yeah, yeah. 1:27:33.960 --> 1:27:35.840 Horice AT's horn arrangement is one of the things that 1:27:35.880 --> 1:27:36.919 makes the song great. 1:27:37.200 --> 1:27:37.400 Uh. 1:27:37.439 --> 1:27:41.320 The Financial Times, who covered the song for some reason, 1:27:41.400 --> 1:27:43.840 presumably because it made a stupid amount of money, have 1:27:43.920 --> 1:27:47.320 their own take on what makes YMCA so unforgettable. They 1:27:47.360 --> 1:27:50.599 write the song's rousing spirit can be attributed to its 1:27:50.680 --> 1:27:51.120 use of. 1:27:51.600 --> 1:27:57.200 How do you say that ekfhanis ekphanicis e phansis? 1:27:57.240 --> 1:27:57.960 That works for me? 1:27:58.400 --> 1:28:03.240 An emotional exclaimat to phrase originating from ancient literature. It's 1:28:03.360 --> 1:28:06.519 rallying cry of young man acts as a sort of 1:28:06.600 --> 1:28:09.719 wake up call, urging the listener to forget their woes, 1:28:10.200 --> 1:28:12.320 chin up and make a change. 1:28:13.160 --> 1:28:15.000 So there you go. That's a stupid thing to say. 1:28:16.439 --> 1:28:20.800 I'm sorry, that's dumb. A dumb thing to say about 1:28:20.960 --> 1:28:27.280 a gay sex song by nakedly profiteering pop producers and 1:28:28.600 --> 1:28:32.880 confused a befuddled Frenchman. That is a dumb over intellectualizing. 1:28:32.920 --> 1:28:36.200 Shame on you, Financial Times, Shame on you for making 1:28:36.240 --> 1:28:38.000 me read that we were all the dumber for it. 1:28:39.200 --> 1:28:41.880 So people all around the world's automatic. That's like an 1:28:42.200 --> 1:28:44.880 something that like a chat GPT. If I was like 1:28:45.000 --> 1:28:48.559 chat GPT, write me a stupid Pitchfork article about some 1:28:48.680 --> 1:28:52.840 like heinously violent rapper, you know, with like a like 1:28:52.960 --> 1:28:56.920 confirmed rapes and like murders, they'd be like Young Genese's 1:28:57.160 --> 1:29:00.519 new song I killed everyone. I did it. I killed 1:29:00.520 --> 1:29:02.280 them all. My God, I killed them all and I 1:29:02.320 --> 1:29:07.200 loved it is really rooted in ekphonesis an emotional exclamatory 1:29:07.200 --> 1:29:11.040 phrase originating from ancient literature criticism. Sometimes I think it 1:29:11.120 --> 1:29:12.720 really does deserve to be a dead art. 1:29:13.000 --> 1:29:15.680 I mean yeah, writing about music, dancing about architecture. 1:29:15.800 --> 1:29:19.400 Yeah, for me, it really became about like it was Pitchfork, 1:29:19.520 --> 1:29:21.760 you know, honestly, I mean I don't love like I'm 1:29:21.760 --> 1:29:25.400 not like a Bangs or christ Gal or any I 1:29:25.400 --> 1:29:28.280 don't deify any rock critic. I think they're all pretty stupid, 1:29:28.320 --> 1:29:31.679 except for Jim Derogatus, who's like took down r Kelly 1:29:31.760 --> 1:29:36.040 single handedly out of a love for Chicago youth. And 1:29:36.120 --> 1:29:38.679 you know, there's obviously great music writers across the world 1:29:38.720 --> 1:29:41.559 who I'm short selling, But like it really was when 1:29:41.560 --> 1:29:46.160 they just started Pitchfork just started to write impressionistic reviews 1:29:46.200 --> 1:29:50.160 about like the colors they saw, Like come on, man, 1:29:50.320 --> 1:29:52.800 just reach out to find out what mixing board they used, 1:29:52.880 --> 1:29:54.960 or like, find out why they wrote the song. Don't 1:29:54.960 --> 1:29:58.960 just postulate about how it makes you feel or say 1:29:59.320 --> 1:30:06.479 like e herds. Now, I can't have a job doing it, 1:30:09.640 --> 1:30:12.559 he said, bitterly, having never been a professional music critic. 1:30:14.320 --> 1:30:16.880 So people all around the world love this song, But 1:30:17.040 --> 1:30:21.320 how about the actual YMCA organization. What's the YMCA say? 1:30:21.320 --> 1:30:24.479 What's Josh saying? They didn't really like it at first? 1:30:24.680 --> 1:30:25.680 Yeah they're religious. 1:30:25.920 --> 1:30:27.320 Oh yeah. 1:30:27.479 --> 1:30:29.840 Soon after the single was released, the YMCA is shoot 1:30:29.880 --> 1:30:32.960 a statement claiming that its trademarked name was used without 1:30:33.000 --> 1:30:36.160 permission and stated their intention to pursue an out of 1:30:36.200 --> 1:30:36.960 court settlement. 1:30:37.320 --> 1:30:39.680 The band were surprisingly sympathetic to this. 1:30:40.000 --> 1:30:43.400 Randy Jones the Cowboy later told Spin, we understood their 1:30:43.400 --> 1:30:45.400 points of view, and we actually talked about it before 1:30:45.400 --> 1:30:48.360 we cut the song. YMCA is a trademark, and a 1:30:48.400 --> 1:30:51.280 trademark needs to be protected. If they allowed one person 1:30:51.360 --> 1:30:53.680 or one group to violate the rights that would put 1:30:53.760 --> 1:30:56.760 YMCA into the public domain. David and I try to 1:30:56.760 --> 1:31:00.600 communicate this to our producer, but couldn't get through, So 1:31:00.680 --> 1:31:02.040 that's presumably. 1:31:01.680 --> 1:31:02.840 That's the coach the friends shot. 1:31:03.000 --> 1:31:08.320 Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. But then the YMCA organization basically 1:31:08.360 --> 1:31:11.640 realized that the village people had made a great advertisement 1:31:11.720 --> 1:31:15.120 for them, which was extremely effective, so they soon backed off. 1:31:15.880 --> 1:31:19.080 Today the YMCA website actually shouts out the song on 1:31:19.120 --> 1:31:23.040 their website and at one point even had instructions. 1:31:22.320 --> 1:31:24.240 For how to do the dance on their homepage. 1:31:24.520 --> 1:31:26.960 That's like one guy in accounting who was like, we're 1:31:27.000 --> 1:31:30.360 cool with the gay thing because it's raking in money, 1:31:30.479 --> 1:31:33.360 And then a bunch of other people sat around a 1:31:33.400 --> 1:31:36.040 table and discussed for hours and they were all very 1:31:36.120 --> 1:31:38.720 unhappy for it, and the accountant kept having to come 1:31:38.760 --> 1:31:39.960 in and explain it to them. 1:31:40.800 --> 1:31:43.559 Yeah yeah, we at. 1:31:43.479 --> 1:31:45.120 The YMCA celebrate the song. 1:31:45.240 --> 1:31:48.479 Media relations manager Leah Powell told Spin in two thousand 1:31:48.520 --> 1:31:51.599 and eight, it's a positive statement about the YMCA and 1:31:51.600 --> 1:31:52.800 what we offer people. 1:31:52.640 --> 1:31:54.040 All around the world. 1:31:54.880 --> 1:31:58.400 Former residents of the McBurnie Why, however, weren't quite so impressed, 1:31:58.439 --> 1:32:02.240 particularly by the video, as David Garrett, who lived there 1:32:02.280 --> 1:32:06.479 for twenty two years between nineteen seventy eight and two thousand. 1:32:06.560 --> 1:32:10.120 Told Gothamist there was certainly a party aspect to their video, 1:32:10.600 --> 1:32:12.160 and that time was the height of all the gay 1:32:12.200 --> 1:32:15.760 clubs in Chelsea. The YMCA did have some overlapping of 1:32:15.800 --> 1:32:18.120 gay cruising, but it was a serious gym for people 1:32:18.160 --> 1:32:20.120 who really wanted to go and work out every day, 1:32:20.439 --> 1:32:22.799 and a nice place to live for working class people. 1:32:23.120 --> 1:32:23.800 Yeah, it's sad. 1:32:23.840 --> 1:32:26.280 There was a New York Times article right before the 1:32:27.200 --> 1:32:30.880 McBurney why closed in I think it was two thousand 1:32:30.880 --> 1:32:33.200 and two about all these people who had been there 1:32:33.240 --> 1:32:35.720 since like the seventies and something some even have even 1:32:35.720 --> 1:32:39.320 from the sixties getting evicted. And it was really well written, 1:32:39.400 --> 1:32:42.240 like these like thumbnail sketches of these poets and people 1:32:42.320 --> 1:32:43.559 who lived in there. 1:32:43.560 --> 1:32:44.799 It was really sad. 1:32:45.280 --> 1:32:47.840 The types of characters seen in the YMCA video were 1:32:47.920 --> 1:32:52.200 likely what the Gothamist piece refers to as temporary occupants 1:32:52.360 --> 1:32:56.000 who mostly lodged there to relax and sleep between shifts, 1:32:56.640 --> 1:33:00.439 rather than these long term renters, often gay in their 1:33:00.439 --> 1:33:03.280 mid twenties or thirties. They used the YMCA as what 1:33:03.400 --> 1:33:07.439 Garrett describes as a dressing room, or as a place 1:33:07.520 --> 1:33:11.360 to discreetly hook up. Garrett continued, the weekend party people 1:33:11.360 --> 1:33:13.839 who would stay there really just needed the rooms to crash. 1:33:14.160 --> 1:33:16.280 They didn't stay there at all to socialize, but to 1:33:16.360 --> 1:33:16.720 take in. 1:33:16.720 --> 1:33:17.320 The night life. 1:33:19.080 --> 1:33:22.080 After the success of YMCA, the Village People tackled another 1:33:22.160 --> 1:33:26.439 hive of mail support, the Navy. I've heard that the 1:33:26.520 --> 1:33:30.040 Navy actually contacted them after seeing the spike in business 1:33:30.040 --> 1:33:33.800 for YMCA and approached them about writing a song that 1:33:33.800 --> 1:33:35.760 would do for the Navy what they did for the YMCA. 1:33:36.040 --> 1:33:39.040 I don't think that's true, but however, once the song 1:33:39.120 --> 1:33:42.160 was released in March nineteen seventy nine, just after YMCA 1:33:42.200 --> 1:33:44.840 had slipped down the charts, the Navy contacted the Village 1:33:44.840 --> 1:33:47.719 People's management asking to use the song in a recruitment 1:33:47.760 --> 1:33:50.599 ad on TV and radio. Management gave them the rights 1:33:50.600 --> 1:33:52.479 for free, on the condition that the Navy would help 1:33:52.520 --> 1:33:55.559 them shoot the music video, and that's how the Village 1:33:55.600 --> 1:33:59.640 People wound up atop the USS Reasoner Birth at the 1:33:59.760 --> 1:34:04.559 Navy in San Diego. Hilariously, though, the Navy did not 1:34:04.760 --> 1:34:07.800 use the video or the song, opting instead to keep 1:34:07.840 --> 1:34:10.200 the traditional anchors away in their ads. 1:34:10.360 --> 1:34:13.080 This was like a Jerry Bruckheimer thing where they were like, 1:34:13.280 --> 1:34:18.240 oh yeah, literally in bed with the navy to let 1:34:18.240 --> 1:34:20.679 them film on the large boat. Yeah, oh my god, 1:34:20.680 --> 1:34:21.760 you're right, like top gun. 1:34:22.800 --> 1:34:26.160 The most surprising musical legacy that spun off on YMCA, 1:34:26.200 --> 1:34:28.120 as far as I'm concerned at least, and I've never 1:34:28.160 --> 1:34:32.519 heard this, is that it apparently helped inspire the Stones 1:34:32.640 --> 1:34:35.360 disco diversion Miss You tracks. 1:34:35.360 --> 1:34:36.840 Do you know this? I didn't know this. 1:34:37.280 --> 1:34:39.800 Bick Jagger was a mainstay at Studio fifty four and 1:34:39.840 --> 1:34:42.360 other similar clubs around the world in the late seventies, 1:34:42.560 --> 1:34:45.479 and he absorbed the disco sounds of these places. A 1:34:45.479 --> 1:34:48.559 piece on Salon details the making of Miss You, and 1:34:48.640 --> 1:34:52.360 it cites interviews with Stones's drummer Charlie Watts recalling how 1:34:52.439 --> 1:34:56.839 much he and Mick loved disco, and Charlie specifically recalls 1:34:56.880 --> 1:35:00.400 mixed passion for YMCA reference one night in particular, when 1:35:00.479 --> 1:35:02.479 Mick left the club in Munich and he just sang 1:35:02.520 --> 1:35:05.040 it over and over and over again, which is a 1:35:05.040 --> 1:35:07.320 moment I would love to have a tape recording of. 1:35:07.479 --> 1:35:09.480 God, that's just so funny. 1:35:09.479 --> 1:35:12.040 Charlie would say. In the seventies there were some fantastic 1:35:12.120 --> 1:35:14.280 dance records out. Mick and I used to go to 1:35:14.360 --> 1:35:16.519 discos a lot. A great way to hear a dance 1:35:16.560 --> 1:35:18.439 record is by listening to it in a dance hall 1:35:18.520 --> 1:35:22.519 or a disco. Keith Richards predictively had to be coaxed 1:35:22.560 --> 1:35:25.400 into doing Miss You, saying we didn't think much of 1:35:25.439 --> 1:35:25.760 miss You. 1:35:25.840 --> 1:35:26.880 As we were doing it. 1:35:26.880 --> 1:35:30.719 It was ah mixed bin to the disco, humming someone's 1:35:30.720 --> 1:35:31.720 song or another. 1:35:32.320 --> 1:35:40.559 Humming some other song, so true to life and hilariously withering. Yes, God, 1:35:40.600 --> 1:35:41.280 I love Keith. 1:35:42.280 --> 1:35:44.160 It's a result of all the nights Mick s been 1:35:44.240 --> 1:35:46.840 at Studio fifty four and coming up with that beat, 1:35:46.920 --> 1:35:49.720 that four on the floor, and he said, add the 1:35:49.760 --> 1:35:52.439 melody to the beat. We just thought we'd put our 1:35:52.479 --> 1:35:56.280 ore in on, Mick wanting to do some disco keep 1:35:56.320 --> 1:35:59.040 the man happy. But as we got into it, it 1:35:59.080 --> 1:36:02.599 became quite an interesting beat and we realized maybe we've 1:36:02.640 --> 1:36:05.400 got a quit essential disco thing here, and out of 1:36:05.400 --> 1:36:08.040 it we got a huge hit. And that was I 1:36:08.080 --> 1:36:13.560 believe their final number one and arguably the most successful 1:36:13.840 --> 1:36:16.960 instance of a rock group hopping on the disco train. 1:36:17.320 --> 1:36:20.120 Yeah, I'd buy that. The song whips It does. I 1:36:20.280 --> 1:36:22.040 Was Made for Loving You by Kiss is also a 1:36:22.040 --> 1:36:23.400 pretty good example of that. 1:36:25.400 --> 1:36:28.639 For some reason, maybe it's the Casablanca Records thing. Kiss 1:36:29.000 --> 1:36:33.960 glam glam disco feels very I don't know, I'm gonna 1:36:33.960 --> 1:36:36.439 get in trouble with the Kiss army, but that doesn't 1:36:36.439 --> 1:36:37.640 feel like a huge jump to me. 1:36:38.120 --> 1:36:40.320 I love miss You. I love that whole some girls, 1:36:40.320 --> 1:36:43.080 I love that whole record. Man, it's so not an 1:36:43.120 --> 1:36:45.240 interesting opinion, but it's so good. I just love the 1:36:45.280 --> 1:36:49.040 way his vocal delivery on that album is hilarious and 1:36:49.080 --> 1:36:52.040 one of the all time like Mick Jagger isms, like 1:36:52.640 --> 1:36:55.160 we can come around around twelve with some poor Rican girls. 1:36:55.160 --> 1:37:00.320 It's just d D meet you, and then Shattered when 1:37:00.320 --> 1:37:03.280 he does like the like yo, yeah, Denny Harry gets 1:37:03.280 --> 1:37:05.639 all these for being like the most awkward white person 1:37:05.640 --> 1:37:07.960 to try rap in the late seventies, but Shattered is 1:37:08.000 --> 1:37:10.800 such dogs. Yeah, there's the line where he goes it's 1:37:10.840 --> 1:37:14.200 my favorite because it's like the simultaneously the most fay 1:37:14.439 --> 1:37:18.120 and like offbeat thing that he's ever sung, which it's 1:37:18.160 --> 1:37:22.840 during his like this town's been We're in tatters. Its shattered, No, 1:37:22.920 --> 1:37:27.679 but there's one Yeah, We've got Rats on the West Side, 1:37:27.880 --> 1:37:32.880 bed Bugs Uptown tremendous. 1:37:33.200 --> 1:37:35.559 I saw for the first time after spending like two 1:37:35.640 --> 1:37:38.720 years of my life working on a podcast about the 1:37:38.800 --> 1:37:41.000 Rolling Stones on tour. I saw The Stones for the 1:37:41.040 --> 1:37:46.200 first time this summer. Oh yeah, zero expectation whatsoever. I'm 1:37:46.200 --> 1:37:49.320 not a huge Stones fan. It was one of the 1:37:49.360 --> 1:37:51.200 most incredible shows I've ever seen. 1:37:51.280 --> 1:37:52.880 Yeah, dude, it's great when they have black people in 1:37:52.960 --> 1:37:57.920 a rhythm section. I mean, seriously, there's a reason, you know, 1:37:58.080 --> 1:38:01.479 Keith didn't keep Charlie or Bill when he started making 1:38:01.720 --> 1:38:04.720 you know, expensive Windos records. That Steve Jordan, that's the 1:38:04.720 --> 1:38:07.719 guy who's still touring with them, right, Yeah, yeah, that 1:38:07.720 --> 1:38:12.760 that relationship goes back a long time. Darryl Jones bass player, Yeah, 1:38:13.280 --> 1:38:16.599 oh yeah. Yeah. When they when they Jettis into their 1:38:16.880 --> 1:38:20.719 most a rhythmic square figures, of course they got good. 1:38:21.000 --> 1:38:23.120 They only had one of the greatest frontmen of all 1:38:23.160 --> 1:38:26.720 time and like the coolest man ever to live on 1:38:26.840 --> 1:38:30.960 rhythm guitar and Ron Wood. I do love Ronwood. Actually, 1:38:31.080 --> 1:38:35.000 you know that his his guitar work on their guitar 1:38:35.040 --> 1:38:36.639 work on Beast of Bird, I mean Beast of Bird 1:38:36.880 --> 1:38:38.000 all time, perfect. 1:38:37.640 --> 1:38:38.840 Songs on of my favorite songs. 1:38:38.880 --> 1:38:41.760 But their guitar interplay on that is so cool. I 1:38:41.800 --> 1:38:44.720 mean they Ron Wood is really I think an undersold 1:38:44.760 --> 1:38:48.160 guitar hero. It's like he's truly he First of all, 1:38:48.240 --> 1:38:50.280 his hands are crazy, like if you've ever tried to 1:38:50.320 --> 1:38:53.760 play any of that faces, like the pinky stretches he 1:38:53.840 --> 1:38:57.320 does for like the boogie rhythms are nuts. But yeah, 1:38:57.360 --> 1:38:59.800 he's just like telepathic when he's playing with people. He 1:38:59.880 --> 1:39:01.880 just has that like sixth sense of like I know 1:39:01.920 --> 1:39:04.320 what you're doing before you do it, and my hands 1:39:04.320 --> 1:39:06.920 will find something to do. That is cool. To add 1:39:06.920 --> 1:39:09.160 to that, and a great painter, I hear. 1:39:09.400 --> 1:39:10.719 Yeah, great painter. Yeah. 1:39:11.200 --> 1:39:12.680 Are we talking about now? 1:39:12.680 --> 1:39:14.439 We got to talk about speaking of the dance floor. 1:39:14.840 --> 1:39:18.559 We got to talk about the YMCA dance you know, Yeah, 1:39:18.560 --> 1:39:20.720 we sure do, man, we gotta do the thing. 1:39:20.760 --> 1:39:21.880 We gotta do it. 1:39:22.200 --> 1:39:24.640 In April nineteen seventy nine, The Village People became the 1:39:24.680 --> 1:39:28.120 first disco act to launch an arenatour, beating the Beg's 1:39:28.200 --> 1:39:30.640 by two months. They were splashed on the cover of 1:39:30.720 --> 1:39:33.400 Rolling Stone and also made several TV appearances on The 1:39:33.479 --> 1:39:38.440 MERV Griffin Show and most crucially for our Purposes, American Bandstand, 1:39:39.120 --> 1:39:43.639 Dick Clark's American Bandstam. The latter program would become crucial 1:39:43.680 --> 1:39:45.919 to their legacy because it was here that the infamous 1:39:46.040 --> 1:39:47.439 YMCA dance was born. 1:39:47.560 --> 1:39:50.519 Was Dick Clark like fifty at this point, probably in 1:39:50.520 --> 1:39:51.200 his forties? 1:39:52.320 --> 1:39:59.040 Actually yeah, wait a minute, yeah, yeah, he was about 1:39:59.040 --> 1:40:01.759 the turn fifty, That forty nine year old. 1:40:01.560 --> 1:40:04.519 Dick Clark staring down the barrel of like five strapping 1:40:04.640 --> 1:40:07.639 gay archetypes, just thinking what did I get myself into 1:40:07.880 --> 1:40:13.640 all those years ago? Just smile and non smile and non. 1:40:13.600 --> 1:40:16.599 Surprisingly, the Village People didn't come up with their iconic 1:40:16.720 --> 1:40:20.080 YMCA dance. Instead, it was a spontaneous invention by the 1:40:20.120 --> 1:40:26.320 TV audience. The day was January sixth, nineteen seventy nine, 1:40:26.920 --> 1:40:29.880 when the Village People made their broadcast on Bandstand, and, 1:40:29.920 --> 1:40:32.479 as Randy Jones the Cowboy would recall in the spin 1:40:32.600 --> 1:40:35.840 Oral History of YMCA, the audience at this particular taping 1:40:35.920 --> 1:40:38.400 was a bunch of kids bust in from a cheerleader camp. 1:40:38.880 --> 1:40:40.479 The first time we got to the chorus, we were 1:40:40.520 --> 1:40:43.000 clapping with our hands above our heads, and the kids 1:40:43.000 --> 1:40:44.720 thought it looked like we were making a y, so 1:40:44.800 --> 1:40:49.440 they automatically did the letters. Host Dick Clark was extremely impressed, 1:40:49.840 --> 1:40:52.600 and when the performance was over, he asked the producers 1:40:52.640 --> 1:40:55.599 to play the song again so the band could observe 1:40:55.640 --> 1:40:59.000 the audience in action, and as they watched, Clark asked 1:40:59.040 --> 1:41:01.439 singer Victor Willis, you guys think you can work that 1:41:01.479 --> 1:41:03.840 in your routine, and Victor Willis said, well, I guess 1:41:03.880 --> 1:41:08.040 we're gonna have to. And you know what d and what 1:41:08.120 --> 1:41:12.000 he did. It's actually really funny how underwhelmed the band 1:41:12.080 --> 1:41:15.200 were upon first seeing what, in truth really only loosely 1:41:15.280 --> 1:41:16.439 qualifies as a dance. 1:41:16.600 --> 1:41:20.400 Yeah, it's like it's like semaphore figure, like signaling it's 1:41:20.479 --> 1:41:22.040 not okay whatever. 1:41:22.280 --> 1:41:25.000 No, I watched this American bands then clip on YouTube, 1:41:25.120 --> 1:41:27.840 and it's so funny because they just seem not impressed 1:41:28.160 --> 1:41:28.639 at all. 1:41:28.680 --> 1:41:31.720 You guys are making letters. Who cares? Yeah, no, they 1:41:31.840 --> 1:41:33.519 really don't care. It was like the era when like 1:41:33.800 --> 1:41:37.440 Tony Basil or Tony Basil was like yeah doing mainstream, 1:41:37.520 --> 1:41:40.280 about to start doing video choreography and was like hanging 1:41:40.320 --> 1:41:42.600 out with the original break dancers in New York. So 1:41:42.640 --> 1:41:45.800 I'm sure these guys are like cool. You know, I've 1:41:45.800 --> 1:41:49.320 seen people spin on their heads, but cool letter shapes 1:41:49.360 --> 1:41:50.599 you're making with your hands. 1:41:53.320 --> 1:41:55.760 David Hodo, the construction worker, it's told spin in two 1:41:55.760 --> 1:41:58.479 thousand and eight. When I saw the movements, I thought, wow, 1:41:58.560 --> 1:42:01.360 that is so stupid that everyone in America sent are doing. 1:42:01.439 --> 1:42:04.720 And I thought, wow, that is so brilliant. It took 1:42:04.720 --> 1:42:06.880 on a life of its own. The next thing we know, 1:42:07.320 --> 1:42:09.880 Hedeki Jaiko has a number one hit in Japan with 1:42:09.960 --> 1:42:12.720 his version of YMCA, and we hit number two in 1:42:12.760 --> 1:42:16.000 the US. That's how it always works. Saijo claimed he 1:42:16.040 --> 1:42:18.559 invented the dance, but as soon as we got to Japan, 1:42:19.080 --> 1:42:20.000 we straightened him out. 1:42:21.120 --> 1:42:26.679 Menacing five three Japanese guy who doesn't speak very much English, 1:42:27.200 --> 1:42:32.720 suddenly confronted by towering, ripped gay archetypes like purposely striding 1:42:32.760 --> 1:42:38.160 down a tokyo. Streated him just as a heart attack, and. 1:42:38.120 --> 1:42:39.360 Here heigel, this will interest you. 1:42:39.920 --> 1:42:42.479 On December thirty first, two thousand and eight, the Guinness 1:42:42.479 --> 1:42:45.760 Book of World Records certified the Village People's performance at 1:42:45.760 --> 1:42:48.840 the Sun Bowl halftime show in El Paso as the 1:42:48.960 --> 1:42:53.559 largest YMCA dance ever, with forty thousand, one hundred and 1:42:53.600 --> 1:42:56.439 forty eight fans doing the move well. 1:42:56.360 --> 1:42:58.639 I'm glad we got that over with. Yes all right, 1:42:59.120 --> 1:43:01.400 And as mentioned as has become a common trope on 1:43:01.400 --> 1:43:03.519 this show, this is where behind the music backing takes 1:43:03.560 --> 1:43:07.519 that takes that major third down apstep. Not long after 1:43:07.520 --> 1:43:11.280 the world beating success of YMCA, everything started to crumble 1:43:11.520 --> 1:43:15.120 for the Village People. Lead singer Victor Willis quit in 1:43:15.160 --> 1:43:17.960 the fall of nineteen seventy nine, supposedly upset that he 1:43:18.000 --> 1:43:21.040 was just a salaried hired hand from a rally. This 1:43:21.120 --> 1:43:23.519 move would have major legal ramifications and used to come 1:43:23.560 --> 1:43:26.400 as we'll see. He was replaced by Ray Simpson, brother 1:43:26.439 --> 1:43:29.719 of Valerie Simpson of the famed musical duo Ashford and Simpson. 1:43:30.560 --> 1:43:33.839 This departure came mere days before shooting the band's movie 1:43:34.200 --> 1:43:37.240 Can't Stop the Music, belying the title. This ultimately wound 1:43:37.360 --> 1:43:39.000 up being a good move because the film has garnered 1:43:39.040 --> 1:43:41.559 a reputation as one of the biggest box office flops 1:43:41.600 --> 1:43:44.920 in history. As we have talked about on the Grease episode, 1:43:45.000 --> 1:43:47.479 it was co written and co produced by Alan Carr, 1:43:47.520 --> 1:43:49.600 a man behind Greece who was notoriously one of the 1:43:49.640 --> 1:43:53.479 cokeiest men. In a very coked up age, he described 1:43:53.479 --> 1:43:55.760 his vision for the film as Singing in the Rain 1:43:56.080 --> 1:44:00.719 for the Disco Crowd okay Man. Can't Stop the Music 1:44:00.720 --> 1:44:02.800 was intended to be a loose biopic of the band, 1:44:02.840 --> 1:44:06.559 with an americanized Jacques Moraley Jack Morrell being played by 1:44:06.640 --> 1:44:10.200 young Steve Gutenberg. Caitlyn Jenner is also in it. It's 1:44:10.280 --> 1:44:13.519 very weird and here we go, William Freakin moment, I'm 1:44:13.520 --> 1:44:15.719 gonna start doing that like your Beatles. Things just work 1:44:15.760 --> 1:44:19.599 in random anecdotes from Yea of William Freakin being either 1:44:19.680 --> 1:44:22.600 weird apple or a genius, or hopefully all three at 1:44:22.640 --> 1:44:24.920 one time. Shooting of Can't Stop the Music in New 1:44:25.000 --> 1:44:29.080 York was disrupted by gay protesters who actually mistook it 1:44:29.240 --> 1:44:32.760 for the shoot for William Freakin's Cruising, which, as you 1:44:32.760 --> 1:44:36.280 will remember, is a film that depicts the leather subculture, 1:44:36.680 --> 1:44:39.439 particularly that of one bar who denied them the right 1:44:39.479 --> 1:44:41.760 to shoot there. So Friedkin went out of his way 1:44:41.960 --> 1:44:45.960 to literally steal every aspect of that bar and recreate 1:44:46.000 --> 1:44:49.920 it in a different gay bar. Hilarious. But that wasn't 1:44:49.960 --> 1:44:52.960 even the only production issue they faced. The movie was 1:44:52.960 --> 1:44:56.840 originally titled Disco Land Where the Music Never Ends. This 1:44:56.960 --> 1:44:59.360 title was changed after the public opinion of disco started 1:44:59.360 --> 1:45:02.720 to take a nose the dawn of the eighties, memorialized 1:45:02.720 --> 1:45:07.880 in every Hacky Montage VH one, CNN, you know the 1:45:08.000 --> 1:45:13.080 usual suspects, with footage of disco demolition night at Chicago's 1:45:13.120 --> 1:45:16.600 Kminsky Park. For those of you privileged enough to have 1:45:16.720 --> 1:45:18.919 not seen this, they just threw a bunch of records 1:45:18.960 --> 1:45:20.720 in a big pile in the middle of the park 1:45:20.760 --> 1:45:24.320 and a shock DJ drove a steamroller over it. Somebody 1:45:24.320 --> 1:45:26.599 blew something up, and that kind of thing used to matter. 1:45:26.880 --> 1:45:29.320 You know, you could just change the entire music industry 1:45:29.320 --> 1:45:33.960 off of a slovenly Chicago guy in a ballpark doing 1:45:34.080 --> 1:45:38.479 something insane an insane period in the most insane country. 1:45:40.000 --> 1:45:42.599 But the title revamp failed to pull people into theaters, 1:45:42.960 --> 1:45:46.559 and the film recouped only two million of its twenty 1:45:46.600 --> 1:45:51.000 million budget twenty million in nineteen seventy nine. Money. Yeah, holy, 1:45:51.720 --> 1:45:56.120 that's either like the largest that's like the largest embezzlement 1:45:56.200 --> 1:45:59.880 fraud in history has to be. Yeah, that's that's nine 1:46:00.200 --> 1:46:05.080 one million today. Yeah, man, that must have been a 1:46:05.120 --> 1:46:07.920 lot of coke. Adding to its historic pedigree, Can't Stop 1:46:07.960 --> 1:46:10.240 the Music also became the first film to win a 1:46:10.240 --> 1:46:13.280 Golden Raspberry Award. The Village People's reputation took a hit 1:46:13.280 --> 1:46:16.200 following this venture, and the group started to splinter. Randy 1:46:16.280 --> 1:46:19.240 Jones resigned, only to be replaced with another faux cowboy. 1:46:19.840 --> 1:46:22.240 The group then attempted to distance themselves from disco by 1:46:22.240 --> 1:46:24.240 taking out full page ads and the music trades to 1:46:24.240 --> 1:46:28.439 showcase their new glam rock look about ten years too 1:46:28.520 --> 1:46:31.840 Late Yep, and tease a new album which would become 1:46:31.880 --> 1:46:35.240 nineteen eighty one's Renaissance. It would prove not to be 1:46:35.360 --> 1:46:38.160 the titular rebirth for the band, and this new sound 1:46:38.240 --> 1:46:40.880 was quickly dumped, and by nineteen eighty five, the Village 1:46:40.880 --> 1:46:43.960 People had decided to part ways. Since they were, as 1:46:44.040 --> 1:46:47.679 previously noted, salaried players, they reportedly all got normal jobs, 1:46:48.080 --> 1:46:51.400 though sadly not still in cost to just a tremendous 1:46:51.439 --> 1:46:53.320 image to like you know. One of them work in 1:46:53.360 --> 1:46:56.680 the Kim's video as like a short shorts butch. 1:46:56.520 --> 1:46:57.839 Cop a call center. 1:46:58.040 --> 1:47:01.720 Yeah. Glenn Hughes, the the Leather Biker Daddy worked in 1:47:01.760 --> 1:47:05.480 a camera store. Construction worker. David Hodo worked as a bartender. 1:47:06.920 --> 1:47:10.160 Alex in the Navy Guy related to the nine to 1:47:10.160 --> 1:47:13.599 eleven Guy was working at an office, and Philippe Rose, 1:47:13.880 --> 1:47:19.080 the allegedly part Lakota Native American Guy, was working as 1:47:19.080 --> 1:47:22.000 a secretary. Victor Willis recorded a solo album in nineteen 1:47:22.000 --> 1:47:27.479 seventy nine that went unreleased until twenty fifteen. Wild The 1:47:27.520 --> 1:47:30.080 band ultimately reformed in nineteen eighty seven as a legacy act, 1:47:30.160 --> 1:47:33.280 hitting the oldies and bar Mitzvah circuit. One of the 1:47:33.320 --> 1:47:36.719 sources interviewed in spins oral History of Ymca is Roger Bennett, 1:47:36.840 --> 1:47:39.720 co author of the book bar Mitzvah Disco, in which 1:47:39.720 --> 1:47:42.760 he offers this choice line, Ymca is the single most 1:47:42.800 --> 1:47:46.360 important song to hit the Jewish religion since Haffnagila. This 1:47:46.439 --> 1:47:50.160 is because of its popularity at bar Mitzvah's obviously, sadly, 1:47:50.200 --> 1:47:52.760 the man behind all of it, Jacques Morelli, became one 1:47:52.760 --> 1:47:54.920 of the victims of the AIDS epidemic when he died 1:47:54.920 --> 1:47:58.679 in nineteen ninety one as what was described in Goldmine 1:47:58.720 --> 1:48:01.920 Magazine as a bit and ailing recluse at the age 1:48:01.960 --> 1:48:06.559 of forty four. There's a great expression in Britain, where 1:48:06.560 --> 1:48:10.200 there's a hit, there's a writ, meaning a legal writ, 1:48:10.479 --> 1:48:14.040 and that is indeed the case for ymca case, get it, 1:48:14.560 --> 1:48:18.840 That's all Jordan Baby, although in this situation it is 1:48:18.880 --> 1:48:22.200 somewhat justified. Victor Willis, the lead singer of the Village People. 1:48:22.320 --> 1:48:25.400 During their glory days, co wrote over thirty of their songs, 1:48:25.400 --> 1:48:29.040 including It's Like in the Navy, Macho Man, Milkshake, the 1:48:29.120 --> 1:48:33.360 Other One, San Francisco, I've already forgotten the parenthetical, and 1:48:33.400 --> 1:48:36.960 Go West. But as a salaried contractor, he'd essentially signed 1:48:36.960 --> 1:48:39.680 away his rights as a writer for hire by the 1:48:39.760 --> 1:48:43.840 music publishing company. It was a bad and sadly all 1:48:43.880 --> 1:48:46.960 too common rookie move in the music industry, but he 1:48:47.040 --> 1:48:49.439 ultimately got the rights to these songs back after winning 1:48:49.600 --> 1:48:52.400 a landmark ruling from a court in twenty twelve that 1:48:52.479 --> 1:48:56.080 allowed artists to reclaim their masters and publishing rights from 1:48:56.120 --> 1:48:59.599 their record labels and music publishers after thirty five years. 1:49:00.600 --> 1:49:03.639 Then a year later, Willis sued for a larger percentage 1:49:03.640 --> 1:49:06.519 of the songwrits on thirteen hits he'd been entitled to 1:49:06.600 --> 1:49:09.599 a third, with management Jacques Moraley and his business partner 1:49:09.640 --> 1:49:14.120 Henry Bilolo a Belulu sharing the rest. Their claim was 1:49:14.120 --> 1:49:16.599 that they'd written the songs in French and Willis merely 1:49:16.640 --> 1:49:19.960 translated them into English. Classic line change a word, get 1:49:19.960 --> 1:49:20.760 a third. 1:49:21.200 --> 1:49:22.240 Oh, yeah, you're right. 1:49:22.600 --> 1:49:24.840 Willis successfully argued that he was the sole writer for 1:49:24.880 --> 1:49:27.679 the lyrics, entitling him to fifty percent of the prophets. 1:49:28.320 --> 1:49:31.160 His ex wife. As we've mentioned, Cosby Show actor Felicia 1:49:31.200 --> 1:49:34.280 Rashad reportedly testified in court that she witnessed Willis writing 1:49:34.320 --> 1:49:37.680 these songs at home in What I Cannot Wait to 1:49:37.760 --> 1:49:44.200 be a moment memorialized in a cheesy biopic Ryan Murphy, Yeah, American, No, 1:49:44.280 --> 1:49:46.880 I wouldn't to be fully po faced and serious, get 1:49:46.920 --> 1:49:48.720 like Christopher Nolan to do it, but still have all 1:49:48.720 --> 1:49:52.400 that cliche both from Bohemian Rhapsody. Like he's like, they're 1:49:52.400 --> 1:49:54.400 like watching the news and winding with a drink, and 1:49:54.400 --> 1:49:57.439 they're like they see like a navy recruitment and he's like, 1:49:57.800 --> 1:50:03.920 wait a minute, in the they want seamen, whips out 1:50:03.920 --> 1:50:09.320 a notebook, furiously starts writing Felicia Whippan to Felicia, what's 1:50:09.400 --> 1:50:12.479 going on. She's alarmed at first what's going on? But 1:50:12.560 --> 1:50:16.719 she doesn't realize that inspiration had struck at that exact moment. 1:50:16.880 --> 1:50:20.280 Then we tastefully fade into a montage of them in 1:50:20.280 --> 1:50:23.600 the studio recording, and then that tastefully transitions into a 1:50:23.720 --> 1:50:27.639 third scene of them performing a live preferably at Live Aid. 1:50:27.680 --> 1:50:31.360 If this didn't happen, we lie because none of this 1:50:31.439 --> 1:50:35.479 matters anymore. This movie will make one billion dollars. It 1:50:35.560 --> 1:50:40.200 probably would anyway, presumably with his massive financial windfall from 1:50:40.240 --> 1:50:42.719 the song royalties. Willis obtained the rights to the Village 1:50:42.760 --> 1:50:45.400 People name in twenty seventeen and assembled a group that 1:50:45.439 --> 1:50:49.040 has been touring intermittently ever since. He has proven to 1:50:49.080 --> 1:50:52.320 be a loyal steward to the song. When the YMCA 1:50:52.400 --> 1:50:55.799 rebranded into The Y in the twenty tens, Willis swiftly 1:50:55.840 --> 1:50:58.280 issued a statement in forming fans this change would not 1:50:58.400 --> 1:51:03.599 impact the song or the days decisive leadership, leadership we 1:51:03.720 --> 1:51:06.760 truly need more of in this country. YMCA has of 1:51:06.960 --> 1:51:09.479 course been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and yes, 1:51:10.200 --> 1:51:13.639 the Library of Congress, in a class that included Doctor 1:51:13.720 --> 1:51:16.439 Dre's debut album, The Chronic, Whitney Houston's version of I 1:51:16.439 --> 1:51:19.000 Will Always Love You, the original Broadway cast recording of 1:51:19.040 --> 1:51:22.880 Fiddler on the Roof, Dusty Springfield's landmark album Dusty and Memphis, 1:51:23.080 --> 1:51:26.960 and Witchit Alignment by Glenn Campbell. Truly, that's a good class, 1:51:26.960 --> 1:51:30.920 truly an astounding cross section of American music there. I 1:51:30.920 --> 1:51:33.919 guess British if you're Dusty Springfield. But she was couseplaying 1:51:33.920 --> 1:51:35.479 as an American, so we count. 1:51:35.280 --> 1:51:36.280 That in Memphis. 1:51:36.760 --> 1:51:39.479 Yes, and you know another queer icon man. I'd love 1:51:39.520 --> 1:51:41.800 to bring up the fact very much Dusty Springfield was 1:51:41.840 --> 1:51:44.800 in a relationship with Norman Tanega, who is the woman 1:51:44.840 --> 1:51:47.360 who wrote the novelty hit walk in My Cat Named 1:51:47.439 --> 1:51:50.920 Dog and more recently in like the past decade and 1:51:51.000 --> 1:51:54.840 change the theme song for what We Do in the Shadows, 1:51:54.920 --> 1:51:57.800 which is called Your You're Dead. 1:51:58.120 --> 1:52:02.479 I had a dream of writing a Dusty Springfield biopic script. Yeah, 1:52:02.520 --> 1:52:05.479 to try to pitch to Adele. I didn't do that, 1:52:06.360 --> 1:52:07.000 did none of that. 1:52:07.200 --> 1:52:09.920 It's like me with my CIA Acid LSD pitch. 1:52:10.040 --> 1:52:11.280 Yeah, we gotta do that. Though. 1:52:11.600 --> 1:52:14.360 Since nineteen ninety six, YMC has played at Yankee Stadium. 1:52:14.360 --> 1:52:17.599 When the ground's crew dredges the infield in the fifth inning, 1:52:18.120 --> 1:52:22.560 what a rich pedestrian task of menial labor to immortalize 1:52:22.560 --> 1:52:25.080 with that song. The crew stops to perform the arm 1:52:25.120 --> 1:52:27.680 gestures at the appropriate time as the crowd follows a 1:52:27.720 --> 1:52:33.320 long America's pastime field of dreams, say it ain't so Joe, etc. 1:52:34.520 --> 1:52:37.360 This is just torture. YMCA has played in outer space 1:52:37.360 --> 1:52:39.920 in two thousands, a wake up song for astronauts on 1:52:40.000 --> 1:52:42.960 day eleven of the Space Shuttle Aquarius's visit to the 1:52:42.960 --> 1:52:45.840 International Space Station, well after the novelty of being in 1:52:45.880 --> 1:52:51.000 space wore the off. He's also used by Donald Trump 1:52:51.040 --> 1:52:52.800 to close out many of his rallies in the twenty 1:52:52.840 --> 1:52:57.160 twenty campaign trail, doing a sort of he rhythmic arms 1:52:57.280 --> 1:53:02.080 lowered swaying that I just find pulsively hypnotic. Yeah, yeah, 1:53:02.120 --> 1:53:05.280 like a bird of paradise if they were just a 1:53:05.400 --> 1:53:11.880 dumpy dump. Initially, Victor Willis was quite fine with this, 1:53:11.920 --> 1:53:13.599 more or less saying that it was good for business, 1:53:13.600 --> 1:53:15.840 and then he reversed course following the Black Lives Matter 1:53:15.920 --> 1:53:18.920 protests in the summer of twenty twenty and demanded that 1:53:18.960 --> 1:53:22.280 Trump stop, though like a true businessman, he later softened 1:53:22.280 --> 1:53:24.680 his stance. The song was played over loud speakers as 1:53:24.720 --> 1:53:27.800 Donald Trump boarded Air Force One on January twenty, twenty 1:53:27.840 --> 1:53:31.040 twenty one, as he departed Washington. Prior to the inauguration 1:53:31.280 --> 1:53:35.360 of Joe Biden. Nothing remarkable has happened since. 1:53:37.240 --> 1:53:38.840 Well, I think we finally run out of things to 1:53:38.840 --> 1:53:42.000 say about YMCA, But I'd like to end by humoring 1:53:42.000 --> 1:53:45.760 the group's stubborn insistence that this song is opened to 1:53:45.840 --> 1:53:49.800 multiple interpretations. As David Hodo says that the close of 1:53:49.840 --> 1:53:54.160 Spin's incredible oral history, the real genius of YMCA is 1:53:54.160 --> 1:53:59.280 that it can be taken anyway you want. Phrasing right, Yeah, 1:53:59.520 --> 1:54:01.439 that phrase I didn't occur to me until left I 1:54:01.479 --> 1:54:03.920 said it aloud. We were once on a TV show 1:54:03.960 --> 1:54:06.519 in England and the hostess said, now, this is a 1:54:06.520 --> 1:54:09.479 gay song, isn't it? And I said, no, Actually, it's 1:54:09.479 --> 1:54:13.479 a Christian song the Young Men's Christian Association. I mean, honey, 1:54:13.520 --> 1:54:18.640 isn't it obvious? I mean, I think his tongue is 1:54:18.960 --> 1:54:20.200 firmly in cheek there. 1:54:20.400 --> 1:54:22.360 I want him to say it like Dean Martin would have, 1:54:22.640 --> 1:54:24.320 like almost in a racist way. 1:54:24.720 --> 1:54:27.439 Oh honey, honey, like like. 1:54:27.360 --> 1:54:30.360 Elvis in a racial Elvis way. I mean, honey, isn't 1:54:30.360 --> 1:54:35.320 it all ViOS? Oh? Ice, cubes clinking and glass. 1:54:37.960 --> 1:54:40.320 My personal favorite reading of the song is from a 1:54:40.320 --> 1:54:44.480 twenty sixteen piece in Vice by Josh Baines called, appropriately enough, 1:54:45.000 --> 1:54:48.680 Hey everyone in Rodney Dangerfield voice. 1:54:50.320 --> 1:54:54.720 Hey everyone, we're all going to get laid. Yeah, hey everyone. 1:54:54.920 --> 1:54:57.960 YMCA by the Village People is actually really really good. 1:54:58.160 --> 1:55:00.800 That's the headline. Of course, this was for I like 1:55:00.840 --> 1:55:04.000 to quote it. Now think about it. YMCA is an 1:55:04.040 --> 1:55:08.760 unbridled ode to masculine support networks. Young man, there's no 1:55:08.880 --> 1:55:11.920 need to feel down, I said, young man, pick yourself 1:55:12.000 --> 1:55:15.520 up off the ground. They sing with utmost force and feeling. 1:55:16.080 --> 1:55:19.200 It's that direct young man that gets me. We've all 1:55:19.240 --> 1:55:22.680 been the skin and miserable young man they're addressing, and 1:55:22.720 --> 1:55:25.160 when you're that young man, it's hard to ask for help. 1:55:25.760 --> 1:55:26.920 The Village People know that. 1:55:27.360 --> 1:55:31.160 They understand that, because they understand that, they're going to 1:55:31.200 --> 1:55:33.920 offer you a helping hand. There's nothing they want and 1:55:33.960 --> 1:55:37.800 returned but your company, because they know all you really 1:55:37.800 --> 1:55:38.919 want is company. 1:55:40.080 --> 1:55:43.160 That's stupid, and I'm going to offer the chance to 1:55:43.320 --> 1:55:47.720 actually rebutt that with an even stupider music critic cliche, 1:55:47.760 --> 1:55:53.000 and that is YMCA exemplifies the PMA, the positive mental 1:55:53.000 --> 1:55:56.960 attitude closely associated with the New York hardcore movement via 1:55:57.000 --> 1:56:00.640 the DC band Bad Brains, who had read the treatise 1:56:00.720 --> 1:56:03.680 Think and Grow Rich authored in nineteen thirty seven by 1:56:03.760 --> 1:56:07.480 Napoleon Hill. This book cause its that a man's mind 1:56:07.560 --> 1:56:10.120 is like a garden and that what you plant in 1:56:10.160 --> 1:56:12.440 there will grow. And so the attitude of having a 1:56:12.520 --> 1:56:16.160 can do positive mental attitude became a rallying cry for 1:56:16.200 --> 1:56:21.240 the band, best exemplified in the song PMA Now. There 1:56:21.320 --> 1:56:24.200 are a number of bands from the New York City 1:56:24.360 --> 1:56:29.440 hardcore tradition, because, as you will know, Jordan, although forming 1:56:29.480 --> 1:56:32.000 in DC, Bad Brains, did come to New York to 1:56:32.000 --> 1:56:37.800 perform at the legendary Venue two A and also cbgbi's 1:56:38.480 --> 1:56:41.080 and they influenced a lot of hardcore people there, most 1:56:41.120 --> 1:56:46.320 notably the Cromax founded by criminal Harley Flanagan and guy 1:56:46.360 --> 1:56:49.120 who was super into being Harry Krishna and still Is 1:56:49.200 --> 1:56:53.680 and vegan John Joseph. That band itself was later famous 1:56:53.720 --> 1:56:56.160 for an altercation in which Harley Flanagan broke into a 1:56:56.200 --> 1:57:01.320 Cromax show and bit and or stabbed John Joseph. That 1:57:01.480 --> 1:57:05.320 was not PMA. Turnstile, a hardcore band of the moment, 1:57:06.440 --> 1:57:10.360 recently repurposed Sylvester Slice to loans thank you for letting 1:57:10.400 --> 1:57:15.880 Me be myself into a PMA aligned message, So people 1:57:15.880 --> 1:57:18.240 please be on the lookout for my new article will 1:57:18.280 --> 1:57:20.360 be coming out it maybe Pitchfork or Who Gives a 1:57:20.360 --> 1:57:25.280 Shit really medium, maybe called y Ymca is actually a 1:57:25.320 --> 1:57:28.760 proto hardcore punk song and you should love it, or 1:57:28.800 --> 1:57:30.680 something by me. 1:57:32.920 --> 1:57:35.360 How's that for a bit of non toxic masculinity. 1:57:35.720 --> 1:57:38.440 This has been too much information. I'm Alex Heigel and 1:57:38.480 --> 1:57:47.120 I'm Jordan Runtalg. We'll catch you next time. Woo. Too 1:57:47.160 --> 1:57:50.640 much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive 1:57:50.640 --> 1:57:52.960 producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog. 1:57:53.120 --> 1:57:56.080 The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. 1:57:56.240 --> 1:57:59.320 The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan Runtalk 1:57:59.360 --> 1:58:02.360 and Alex High, with original music by Seth Applebaum and 1:58:02.440 --> 1:58:04.840 the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, 1:58:04.920 --> 1:58:06.480 please subscribe and leave us a review. 1:58:06.760 --> 1:58:11.080 For more podcasts and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 1:58:11.280 --> 1:58:13.000 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.