Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry

You would think that going to a concert would be a safe thing for everyone…first, you have thousands of like-minded people looking to have a good time…no one sets out to ruin the evening for everyone else…you paid good money for your tickets and you’ve waited a long time for this night to come.  Second, there’s security everywhere…the last thing an artist, a promoter, or a venue wants is there to...

When you’re a rock star, life can be very busy…there are songs to write, rehearsals to attend, albums to record, promotional appearances to make, interviews to be conducted, and tours to organize and execute…there’s often not a lot of free time. Maybe you live in a large house or an estate… you might have multiple pied-de-terres around the planet: a home base, a vacation spot or two, and some cond...

On August 6, 1989, a chartered 757 nicknamed “The Magic Bus” took off bound for the USSR…on board were Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, The Scorpions, Skid Row, Ozzy Osbourne, Cinderella, and a few others… It was the dying days of the soviet union…but other than the communist hardliners, few people were sad about that…Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, had ushered in the era of glasnost and per...

In 1960, after months of testimony and investigation, it was made illegal for anyone to bribe a radio station or any of its employees to play a record…payola was forbidden under punishment of jail time and a fine of up to $10,000… This, it was hoped, would keep the marketplace even and fair and no one—not a label, an artist, or anyone promoting that artist—would be able to jump the queue to get a...

In a fair and just universe, we would live in a meritocracy…the best and most talented would naturally rise to the top and be properly recognized and compensated for their contributions to humanity…yeah, nice idea, but… We’d like to think that music operates this way…the best and the brightest naturally have their songs heard and become popular because, well, they’re good…these artists have hit re...

Episode 294: On the evening of December 21, 1883, near Bloomfield, Ontario, visitor Peter Lazier was murdered by two intruders at the farmhouse of Quakers Gilbert and Margaret Jones. The community, deeply affected, quickly organized a search. They traced footprints in the snow, leading to Joseph Thomset and the Lowder family's homes near West Lake. By the next day, Joseph Thomset and brothers Davi...

In 1969, the Rolling Stones were about to enter their imperial phase, a time in their career where everything they did seemed to go right…they were on their way to being the biggest rock band in the world… In December 1968, they released “Beggar’s Banquet,” their biggest-selling album so far…work had started on “Let It Bleed,” another record that would become a classic…that would eventually be fol...

If you’re an artist and things are working out well, there will come a time when you need a manager…you need someone to take care of the business end of things while you focus on the music…that’s when you need a manager… A manager does everything from booking gigs to devising career strategies… which includes promotion and marketing, networking, and conducting any negotiations on your behalf…and t...

In 1931, a larger than life prospector, in search of Slumach’s legendary lost gold mine goes missing in the wilderness of British Columbia. In this episode, we retrace the epic search and rescue efforts that went into looking for the missing prospector as well potential clues left behind at his campsite, that point to an even bigger mystery of what happened to Volcanic Brown? Host:  Kru Williams G...

Phil Spector was one of the most successful record producers and songwriters of the 1960s and 70s…he was a boy genius, a millionaire many times over by the time he was 21…  He was the first to use the recording studio as an instrument…he called his recording style “wall of sound,” music that was densely layered and jumped out of am radio speakers like nothing else… His favourite collection of stud...

The very last thing an artist or a promoter or owner of a venue wants is for someone to get hurt—or worse--at a concert…but it does happen… There are always stories about bad behaviour or unexpected crowd dynamics… Altamont in 1969, The Who crowd crush in 1979, Woodstock 99, the nine dead during Pearl Jam’s set at the Roskilde Festival in 2000, the deaths at the Astroworld Festival in 2021, and th...

There are monsters who walk among us, people who prey on the young and vulnerable…and they have always been out there and in all walks of life… John Wayne Gacy hired himself out as a clown for parties…it was later discovered that he raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 boys and young men…26 bodies were found in the crawl space under his home near Chicago… Robert Anderson was the sports physic...

The Manson family murders are among the most famous crimes in American history…their actions have been documented over and over and over…this program will not be a recitation of what happened…instead, we’re going to look specifically at how music figures into this story, before, during, and after these horrific events…music had a much bigger part in the murders than most people realize… This is a...

Since homo sapiens gained consciousness and self-awareness, we’ve been asking some big questions…what does it all mean?... What’s the purpose of existence?... Is there something more to life and the universe than what I can see?... This has led us down all kinds of spiritual journeys and rabbit holes…for billions, this means turning to religion…but what if traditional spirituality and beliefs don’...

When something bad happens, we want to know why…the weirder and badder the event, the more we need to know… It can’t possibly be random…someone needs to be responsible and held accountable…someone needs to be blamed…and there had better not be any loose ends… Certain segments of the population have always been suspicious of the official story…forget the simplest of most logical explanation…these a...

In the summer of 2006, a young Calgary woman was on top of the world. She had a supportive family, amazing friends and a great job. But life as she knew it came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the night on August 6, 2006. In this episode, Global News senior crime reporter Nancy Hixt shares details of a violent attack- a story that’s every woman’s worst fear. www.calgarycrimestoppers.org - refer...

By 1965, change was in the air…a new generation of young people were coming of age and they did not want what their parents did…theirs was the counter-culture, a rebellion and repudiation of the status quo…and for a while it was all peace and love—or at least it pretended to… Yes, we had the “summer of love” in 1967…the Beatles sang “all you need is love”…John Lennon asked everyone to “give peace...

Metal is one of the most extreme forms of music ever invented…once you’re inside this tent, you quickly realize that the deeper you go, the more intense the music becomes as people compete to see who can make the heaviest music in the universe… There are genres with names like power metal, speed metal, thrash, pirate metal, gothic metal, industrial metal, and metal core… Soon you encounter death m...

It’s hard to disappear…with all the surveillance tools out there and digital smog we leave behind, it’s almost impossible to vanish without a trace…yet it happens… We still haven’t found Amelia Earhart who has been missing since 1937 when she tried to fly around the world…we don’t know what became of DB Cooper, the hijacker who in 1971 bailed out of a plane somewhere in the pacific northwest with...

How many times have you or heard someone say “i’m obsessed with [whatever]”…you’re trying to say that there’s something of which you can’t get enough…it could be anything from a flavour of ice cream to a reality TV show…it’s usually just hyperbole and exaggeration… But if we get clinical, obsession can be a form of mental illness…we open up the psychology textbooks, we learn that a true obsession...

There have been many studies into the different types of music fans…basically, they can be broken down into four types… At the bottom of the pyramid are people who aren’t fans at all…they don’t like you or don’t care about you…they may not even know who you are…so for the purposes of this discussion, they don’t matter… The next level are casual fans…they sort of like you or your music, but they ca...

Music can be a powerful motivator…not just for individuals, either…if the message is strong and people are searching for truth, music can transform entire communities and countries around the planet…and its effects can long outlive its creator, inspiring people to action for decades… Bob Marley was one of those creators…not only can his music be heard in virtually every country, but his image is e...

When rock music appeared in the 1950s, a lot of people were frightened…all this dancing and gyrating and hootin’ and hollerin’ was labeled “the devil’s music”…it beckoned youth down a dangerous path towards immorality and destruction… It encouraged disrespect of parents and elders…it spat in the face of strong traditional values…and this music could only lead to a rise in godlessness, which, of co...

In the spring of 1973, Led Zeppelin was the biggest live act in the world…on may 4, they started a two-leg, 34-date tour of North America, their ninth time on the continent…and they began to break records… There were 53,000 at the first show in Atlanta…the second show—played at Tampa Stadium in Florida—58,600 fans showed up, breaking the attendance record for a gig by a single band set by the Beat...

If there’s money to be made, chances are organized crime will want a piece of it…call it the mob, the mafia, the costa nostra, or “this thing of ours,” these groups, these families are close to the action in some way… Construction, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, protection rackets, gambling, loan sharking, tax fraud, stock manipulation, corruption of public officials, porn—you name it and there’s a...