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- 4 years 9 months ago
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Here is another one of my favorite Blender magazine lists, abridged to the top ten:
#10
PEACE, LOVE AND R**E
Woodstock '99 Organizers
Overpriced water and a grisly finale
Rap sheet "We felt that as good as [Woodstock '94] was, we could do better," claimed promoter John Scher, explaining why he decided to schedule another show five years later. In fact, Scher and his colleague Michael Lang were responsible for a disastrous festival.
The last day of the 72-hour Woodstock '99 was marked by a minor riot, numerous acts of arson and a potpourri of other violent crimes. Attendees also reported many instances of sexual assault -- including four alleged r**es, one of which was a gang r**e said to have occurred during Limp Bizkit's set.
The defense "Throwing psychology aside for a minute, in a crowd this size, there are going to be a certain number of a**holes," said Dr. Paul Ramirez, the "director of psychiatry" for Woodstock '99.
Quote Asked about the alleged r**es, Scher replied, "What about the 199,000 kids who came and had a great time?"
#9
BEYOND THE PALE
White People
Exploitation, discrimination, appropriation
Rap sheet Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to run into them in a dark alley. At least, not if you’re one of the many black musicians who were plagiarized, discriminated against and exploited by white rockers and executives. For example:
[ul]
[li]Led Zeppelin stole songs from Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf, adapting Wolf's "Killing Floor" into "The Lemon Song."[/li]
[li]Until the mid-'60s, execs omitted pictures of black artists from many albums for fear of offending white audiences.[/li]
[li]White artists from Pat Boone to Vanilla Ice have diluted black styles and sold the results to a mass white market.[/li]
[/ul]
The defense In 1987, Zeppelin settled with Dixon, admitting lyric theft and paying him royalties. Recently, the White Stripes have loudly credited Blind Willie McTell for songs of his they've covered.
Quote "You get caught only when you're successful. That's the game." - Robert Plant
#8
HIP-HOP HOODLUM
Suge Knight
Put the gangsta in gangsta rap
Rap sheet The CEO of Death Row Records (now Tha Row) has a reputation for his intimidating business practices, which are even more substantial than the ex-footballer’s six-foot-two, 300-pound frame. In 1992, former N.W.A rapper and Ruthless Records head Eazy-E alleged that Knight had threatened him with a baseball bat while “negotiating” to get Eazy’s bandmate Dr. Dre out of his Ruthless contract. Knight denied the accusation, though Eazy got no compensation when the contract was broken.
A brawl in a Las Vegas hotel put Knight in the slammer from 1996 to 2001. Nick Broomfield’s recent documentary Biggie & Tupac implicated Knight in the murder of Tupac Shakur — a charge he strongly denies.
The defense Prompted by a news item he saw while imprisoned, Knight donated $21,000 to rebuild a vandalized inner-city playground in Sacramento, California.
Quote "I'm God's child, and God always tells me the truth. Those stories are full of lies ... It's amazing what people can say about you when you're in prison."
#7
CENSORESS IN CHIEF
Tipper Gore
Made Dee Snider sound like Lenny Bruce
Rap sheet In 1985, when Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore heard her daughter's copy of Prince's Purple Rain, the future vice-presidential wife flew into a rage that prompted the creation of the Parents' Music Resource Center, an activist group devoted to pressuring the record industry not to sell such "pornography" to children. Aided by religious rightists such as Pat Robertson, the PMRC endorsed the specious notion that naughty music promotes social ills, and encouraged companies to affix warning labels on "offensive" albums.
The defense The PMRC sparked surreal Congressional hearings in 1985 at which Frank Zappa, John Denver and Dee Snider defended their lyrics.
Quote "What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow J on all albums written and/or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?" - Zappa, addressing the U.S. Senate
#6
PUBLISH AND BE DARNED
Morris Levy
Ripped off innumerable songwriters
Rap sheet A legendary shyster, Levy established a record company, Roulette, in 1956, and owned several nightclubs, including New York's Birdland. But his real money came from his devious music publishing practices. The entrepreneur preyed on poor and needy songwriters, buying tunes for as little as $15 and often crediting himself as the primary songwriter.
Levy even ripped off John Lennon, releasing an unauthorized album that featured three covers by the former Beatle. His career ended in 1988, when he was convicted of extortion along with a Genovese family mob underboss. He died two years after his conviction holding a total of 35,000 copyrights.
The defense Was the United Jewish Appeal's man of the year in 1973.
Quote "Morris gave me back the demo, bent in half, and told me if his name wasn't on it, the song didn't come out." --- Ritchie Cordell, songwriter
#5
THE DEVIL'S DANDRUFF
Cocaine
Trashed careers, personalities, nostrils
Rap sheet By accumulating dopamine in the brain, cocaine makes the dedicated user obsessive and hyperactive. During the periods of its greatest popularity (the mid-’70s and the late ’80s), artists and producers spent millions of dollars fattening songs with overdubs only dogs could hear. The result? Ornate but lousy albums like the Eagles’ The Long Run, Aerosmith’s Night in the Ruts and, recently, Oasis’s Be Here Now.
The list of musicians whose deaths were at least partly attributable to coke abuse includes Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon, the Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott and the Who’s John Entwistle. Meanwhile, crack, cocaine’s more destructive cousin, helped destroy the careers of Sly Stone and David Crosby, to name but two.
The defense Was the chief stimulant behind Fleetwood Mac's Rumors and most disco records.
Quote "When I fly over the Alps, I think, 'That's like all the cocaine I sniffed.'" --- Elton John
#4
BAD DAD
The Reverend Marvin Gay
Killed his son, Marvin Gaye
Rap sheet A storefront preacher and the father of the soul legend (who changed the spelling of his last name to Gaye), Gay frequently beat his offspring for the slightest infraction.
In 1984, the singer, nearly broke and deep in a drug-induced paranoia, was forced to move into his parents' Los Angeles home. That April 1, he attacked his father for verbally abusing his mother. The reverend responded by shooting his son. Ironically, Marvin, Jr. had given his father the gun as a gift four months earlier; he was killed instantly. Gay was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years' probation. He died at age 84 of pneumonia on October 10, 1998.
The defense Doctors examining Gay after his arrest discovered a large tumor at the base of his brain --- a possible explanation for his erratic behavior.
Quote "Let's just say I didn't dislike him." --- Gay, when asked during an interview if he loved his son
#3
STONE CRAZY
The Hell's Angels
Altamont assailants
Rap sheet The moment that secured the Angels' place in rock infamy occurred in 1969, when the Rolling Stones hired them to provide security for their free show at Northern California's Altamont Speedway. The Angels kept order by beating audience members with pool cues and knocking down Marty Balin, the lead singer of opening act Jefferson Airplane, when he objected to their behavior.
Later, as the Stones played “Sympathy for the Devil,” several Angels stabbed to death a young black man named Meredith Hunter after he allegedly taunted them with a gun — an incident captured on film in Gimme Shelter.
The defense Ralph "Sonny" Barger, the president of the Angels' Oakland chapter, contends that Hunter's death was the Stones' fault.
Quote "All that sh** about Altamont being the end of an era was a bunch of intellectual crap." --- Barger
#2
HUSBAND FROM HELL
IKE TURNER
Tina's not-so-better half
Rap sheet Although an influential figure in early rock 'n roll, Ike Wister Turner is far more infamous for his brutal treatment of his onetime wife and performing partner, Tina, than for his music.
According to Tina, Ike first beat her with a shoe tree, later moving on to “anything that was handy.” Tina’s suffering — Ike once stuck a lit cigarette up her nose — was not rewarded with fidelity; he later admitted that he had at least a hundred girlfriends during their marriage. By the ’70s, he was addicted to cocaine. “If I thought he was bad before,” Tina said, “the cocaine started making him evil.” She left him in 1976; he later beat his son, Ike Jr., with a c**ked .45.
The defense Ike claims he "never beat Tina," but he's been contradicted by many witnesses --- and, most darningly, by his autobiography.
Quote "It was like a horror movie. A horror movie with no intermissions." --- Tina, on life with Ike
And finally, rock's most dastardly villain...
#1
BEATLEMANIAC
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN
The man who killed John Lennon
Rap sheet On Saturday, December 6, 1980, British DJ Andy Peebles interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono to publicize their new album Double Fantasy. The record was Lennon's first in half a decade, but as he told Peebles, "We've already got half the next album, and we'll probably go in just after Christmas and do that. We're already talking about the ideas for the third. I can't wait."
It wasn't to be. Two days later, outside the Dakota, his apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Lennon was shot five times with a .38-caliber short-barreled revolver. He was rushed to nearby St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, but was declared dead at 11:07 P.M.
The man with his finger on the trigger was Mark David Chapman. Born in 1955 in Fort Worth, Texas, Chapman was a delusional depressive who relied on the advice of an imaginary group of "little people." Once a big Beatles fan, he had come to believe that Lennon was "a phony" after reading an interview Lennon gave to Newsweek earlier in 1980. Borrowing $5,000 from his father-in-law, Chapman flew to New York from Honolulu and waited for his chance.
"I was sitting inside the arch of the Dakota building," he later recalled. "I see this limousine pull up. The door opened. John got out. He walked past me. I took five steps toward the street, turned, withdrew my gun and fired five shots into his back. He never saw it coming."
In August 1981, after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. His first parole application was rejected in 2000.
The defense Chapman was a fan of J.D. Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye and had a copy in his possession when he shot Lennon.
Quote "The little people all kind of worshiped me. Sometimes, when I'd get mad, I'd blow some of them up."
~Ben"I am such a purist for old information on anything '70s and '80s."Are you sure you want to delete this post? Yes | No
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