Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry

There are all kinds of shady and dangerous creatures lurking in the music industry. Since about the mid-20th century, the mob has found ways to extract money by getting involved in record labels, radio stations, artist management, and live music venues.

Although things aren’t what they used to be, the mob’s involvement played a key part in the development of the music industry for decades.

One of the key figures in all this ran a New York-based label called “Roulette Records,” which started business in 1957. One of the co-founders was Morris Levy, who got his start in jazz clubs.

At his peak, Levy headed 90 companies employing over 900 people, including music publishing, the independent record label game, running record stores, operating record-pressing plants, tape-duplicating facilities, artist management, and a music distribution company.

Some called him an “entrepreneur”…but the truth was Morris—“Mo” or “Moishe” to his friends (and a few enemies)—was a crook who controlled far more of the industry than people realized…and much of his business was connected to organized crime.

Morris was probably the most mobbed-up music man in history…a lot of people were ripped off for tens of millions of dollars…and more than one person got hurt.

I’m Alan Cross, and this is episode 47 of Uncharted...Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry

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You don’t get much more Rock Star than Ozzy Osbourne. Through more than 50 years, his wild persona and crazy behaviour not only made him an icon of rock 'n' roll, but also a larger-than-life cultural figure popular with three or four generations. Given the abuse that he inflicted upon himself, it’s a miracle that he made it to age 76.

 On this edition of Uncharted, we’re going to trace the insanity that was Ozzy from birth to death. And you can’t do that without honouring his music. He will be rightly remembered as the Godfather of Heavy Metal.

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Theft is rampant in the music world, and it takes many forms. Musicians regularly deal with stolen gear…guitars disappearing from stages, rehearsal spaces being robbed, or entire vans being emptied. These losses hurt, but they’re tangible…physical items taken by

Then there’s the more invisible kind of theft…the kind that bleeds artists

But the rarest and most cinematic form of music theft? Stealing the recordings themselves right from the source, at the recording studio.

Such a theft like this should be entirely impossible, yet this is what Green Day says happened to an album they were working on called “Cigarettes and Valentines”. They went into work on the record one day, and the tapes were just…gone!

Green Day has always insisted that these tapes were stolen. However, there was never any police investigation, no suspects were named, and no trace of the tapes or the music contained has ever been found anywhere outside official channels.

 This is episode 45 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”… the real story behind Green Day’s stolen “Cigarettes

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Just after midnight on March 9, 1997, one of the greatest rappers of all time, Notorious B.I.G  left for a party in the Hollywood Hills.

Tensions were high, he felt he was in enemy territory because six months earlier Tupac Shakur had died in a drive-by shooting on a Las Vegas street and many blamed him.

The two had been embroiled in a bicoastal feud that cost many their lives.

That night a man lowered the window of his vehicle drew a 9 mm pistol and fired six shots killing the world-renowned rapper

This week we look at what became known as the East Coast West Coast hip hop war and how Notorious BIG's death became the linchpin that helped broker peace.

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Before the internet, it was reasonably easy to just disappear. Get a fake ID, leave the country with some cash, and you were gone.

These kinds of mysteries can also be found in the world of music; artists who disappear without a trace…and I’m not talking about musicians who retired and then become recluses…there are plenty of those.

We haven’t seen much of Steve Perry since he left Journey…he’s very much alive but isn’t interested in being famous anymore…Syd Barrett tripped out on too much LSD, got fired from Pink Floyd, and was rarely seen by anyone until he died of cancer in 2006…John Deacon of Queen gave up his music career after Freddie Mercury died…we haven’t seen anything of him.

Then there are the musicians who disappeared involuntarily…one day they were here and the next day, they were just gone…and this has happened a lot more than you may realize.

This is episode 43 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…and the next of this program is “Missing and Presumed Dead”.

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Getting your hands on a concert ticket can be a difficult (if not impossible) task...beyond the cost (which can be substantial), there are all the hoops one must jump through to secure a ticket.

You must be computer literate, you need to be at your computer, ready to go when the appointed on-sale time arrives, and you must be prepared to jockey for position in the queue with other fans who are not just from your area but who are logging in from around the world.

And then there are the scalpers, the crooks, and the shysters who somehow elbow their way to the front of the line to scoop up hundreds of tickets before you even get a chance to enter your credit card number.

These people—and the tools they employ—cause all kinds of headaches and heartbreak among fans who just want to go to a show. And how they operate often involves tactics that are not exactly legal.

So, who are these people who cheat their way to the

And how do they do it?

I’m Alan Cross and this episode 42 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”. This time, our focus is on the tactics, misdeeds,

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The music industry isn’t exactly the most moral or law-abiding place, either…if you know where to look, you’ll find crime all over the place.

We’ve tackled this topic before…episode 4 of this podcast dealt with the mysterious disappearance of $200,000 of Led Zeppelin’s money from a hotel safety deposit box…there was the time when Joe Strummer and Topper Headon from the clash were jailed for stealing some pillowcases from a holiday inn…and another episode featured the epically violent theft of two of Lady Gaga’s dogs…

 We’re going to build on those stories with more tales of people in the music industry who took things they had no business taking…

I’m Alan Cross and this is episode 41 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…and this time, it’s some wild stories of robbery and theft.

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On the evening of February 25, 1682, Alessandro Stradella was stabbed to death in a square in genoa, Italy…Stradella was a classical composer of some renown…it appears he was killed by three brothers looking to avenge the honour of their sister…and when the knives were put away, Stradella became the first documented case of the murder of a professional musician. 

Fortunately, the purposeful killing of musicians was a rare thing until we got to the 20th century…then came a string of shootings, stabbings, beatings, and strangling’s. 

Some of these killings were high-profile—Sam Cook, John Lennon, Tupac, and Biggie, for example, and we still talk about those murders…but what about all the others? 

Many have faded from memory because we’ve either moved on, the case didn’t get much attention, or the murder was solved and there’s nothing else to say…but the victims need to be remembered because they were human beings. 

This is episode 40 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…this time, it’s a survey of musicians whose lives were cut short by someone with a gun, a knife, and even torture devices…and wow: there are some wild stories here.

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This is a show about censorship…wait, wait!...don’t

 Let try this from a different angle…there is an area

 Humans are dumb creatures, and that dumbness is always on display…and this can be really, really funny…if more of this stuff was taught in history classes, we’d have more historians and writers and people curious about the human condition.

 Let me give you an idea…instead of going through the details of the war of the roses, include this in a history less…in Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was common knowledge that ground of bits of mummies stolen from tombs in Egypt was good for you…mix in a little chocolate and you have a nice little snack…so yes, cannibalism in powdered form use to be a thing…and this true: it’s why there aren’t many ancient Egyptian mummies around anymore.

Here’s another…Andrew Jackson was the 7th President of the United States when he died in June 1845, his beloved parrot was thrown out of his funeral because the thing kept swearing.

One more…Jack Daniels—yes, the bourbon guy—died of an infected toe…he stubbed it very badly when he kicked a safe to which he’d forgotten the combinations…

See what i mean?...and here on “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry,” talk about some seriously grisly and awful

 Yes, it is about censorship…but it’s also stupid history…it’s episode 39…and boy, this is one is dumb…it’s the insane true story of The Kingsmen and “Louie Louie”.

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I once had a conversation with someone about the craziest tours in the history of music…the usual names came up.

The who trashing hotel rooms…led zeppelin’s tours with their private jet, groupies, and tons of drugs…that time in Atlanta when Ozzy drank himself into oblivion, passed out in the wrong hotel room for 24 hours, and missed a show as a result.

In 1976, ZZ Top tried to take the entire Texas experience on the road, which involved transporting real live animals to every gig…a buffalo escaped and managed to wreck nine rented limos that were parked at the gig.

Around the same time, there was the disastrous Sex Pistols tour of America…there were also stories about The Rolling Stones, Metallica, Van Halen, and all the usual suspects.

But the conversation turned to the subject of the most depraved and dangerous tour of all time…who was responsible for that?... Motley Crue?...Marilyn Manson?...Oasis?

The debate when on for some time—until someone mentioned a road trip in 1993 that nearly killed every member of the group.

We’re not talking about any sort of violence…it was a tour featuring so much alcohol, so many drugs, and so much stupid behaviour that members suffered heart attacks, seizures, serious mental illness, and overdoses so serious that one member was clinically dead for two minutes.

 That was a summary of something called “The Devotional Tour”…at the centre of it was Depeche Mode…it has gone down in rock history as “the most debauched rock tour ever”.

This is episode 37 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…an inside look at the tour that nearly took down Depeche Mode forever…and it was all their fault.

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