DISGRACELAND

What happens when the hardest working man in show business takes a break? Idle hands are indeed the devil’s workshop. This episode will detail James Brown’s scorching career as well as the scorching high speed chase he led cops on that led to his arrest and jail sentencing for drugs and firearms. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at  www.disgracelandpod.com...

In March 1996, promoter Michael Alig, the "King of the Club Kids," after appearing on TV’s Geraldo and on the cover of New York magazine, bashed his friend and DJ Angel Melendez in the head with a hammer. The body was then dismembered and stuffed into a duct-taped cardboard box. Alig proceeded to tell anyone who would listen—including his friends from the raging '90s NYC club scene&mda...

Who killed Tupac? Who killed Biggie? The answer has been right there out in the open for years. This episode looks at the lives and deaths of both rap superstars, the east coast/west coast beef and the media’s culpability in driving a highly sensationalized narrative that ultimately led to the murder of both men. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at  www.disgracel...

Bob Marley is known as the peace and love reggae superstar, but the truth of who he really was is a bit more complicated. After gunmen raided his home, putting bullets into him, his wife, his manager and his guitar player, Bob survived. But the lives of his assassins—all of them—were eventually brought to violent, horrific ends. And their killers were never found. Many think the perpet...

The Arlington, Texas rapper born Taymor Travon McIntyre was involved in two killings by the time he was 17. Arrested on murder charges and placed under house arrest until hearings were to take place, Tay-K sawed off his ankle bracelet and announced to the world via Twitter that he was going on the run. He made it from Texas all the way to New Jersey, where he recorded his most infamous song, &ldqu...

In the 1970s, the world regarded the Rolling Stones as an insular band of hedonistic and glamorous pansexual junkies. But all of the trouble they’d stirred up during the ’60s and early ’70s would be dwarfed by the mess they would cause in Canada in 1977. Up until that point, the band’s money and collective luck had been enough to fend off destruction. But the scandal they e...

TLC’s Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was known as “the crazy one.” She did, after all, burn down the mansion of her boyfriend, NFL player Andre Rison. But given the fact that it was done after one of many domestic assaults, Disgraceland sees Left Eye as a badass—and not “the crazy one.” This episode digs into what really happened that night, who Lisa Lopes re...

In 1968, Van Morrison was hiding out from the New York City Mafia in Boston, Massachusetts. Recently the victim of a physical attack from a Genovese crime family member, Morrison was desperately trying to piece together a band to complete what would become his landmark creative statement, Astral Weeks. One of the musicians who would help him achieve this goal—a young, handsome guitar player...

Never has there been a more extreme form of musical rebellion than Norwegian Black Metal. The genre’s founding band, Mayhem, its sister act Burzum and supporting cast of musicians with names like Necrobutcher, Hellhammer, and Dead horrified Norway in the early nineties with supreme acts of terror, satanic ritualism, murder, arson, and cannibalism. By the time the ashes settled and the corpse...

Sam Cooke was a lot of things: soul superstar, civil rights champion, whip smart entrepreneur. But he was also a serial womanizer with an unbridled libido. On December 11, 1964, Cooke was shot to death by Bertha Lee Franklin, manager of the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles. The killing was ruled a justifiable homicide due to Cooke’s unruly, drunken behavior, which involved him holding another woman c...

It has long been believed that punk rock icon Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose. That is true. However, new evidence suggests that his overly affectionate and increasingly dependent mum gave him a fatal hotshot in a final, maternal act of mercy. Listen to find out why. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at  www.disgracelandpod.com . Who are the most disgraceful couples in...

The night before Jerry Lee Lewis’ fifth wife died, she made a phone call to her mother. She told her that she was thinking of leaving the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer, but that he wouldn’t let her. She also made a second call—this one to the sister of her high school sweetheart, making plans for the sister to come take her away from Jerry Lee later that month. Then … in mid-sentence the phone went dead....