As stated at numerous points in this episode, a lot of the things discussed here can be found in the documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus. We urge you to go check out that film here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/qlazzarus as it is a brilliant piece of work.

It is, in fact, that only "official" release by Q Lazzarus. She would later go on to appear in Demme's next film, the wonderful Philadelphia, singing a cover of Roxy Music's classic tune "Heaven". After that, though, she would simply vanish from the industry entirely.

So what happened? Why did this seemingly promising up and coming artist, who had two huge brushes with fame, suddenly disappear without trace? Well, it's a rather complicated, and compelling, story that touches on industry discrimination, artist exploitation, and the music business's treatment of unique talents. This week we dive into that story, with the help of a remarkable documentary film called Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus - a film that came about through an almost impossibly serendipitous encounter between filmmaker Eva Aridjis Fuentes and her mysterious subject. The documentary is available on Vimeo and you should absolutely check it out for yourself, alongside the Sacred Bones compilation of her previously unreleased works.

Please note that this story deals with some heavy themes and doesn't have the resolution we might hope for, but it's an important and deeply affecting tale that deserves to be told.

Highlights:

Everyone knows Hulk Hogan's entrance music, but how many know the fascinating story behind Rick Derringer's "Real American"? With the recent passing of Hulk Hogan, we thought we’d revisit a previous episode and update it with new information. Oh, and also to film the whole dang thing as we weren’t doing that back then.

So, this week we’re exploring the unlikely journey of a song that became one of wrestling's most iconic themes, examining its cultural impact, political appropriation, and the complex legacy of both its creator and, in some ways, Hulk Hogan too.

From Rick Derringer's impressive musical pedigree (The McCoys, collaborations with Steely Dan, producing Weird Al) to the song's evolution from US Express theme to Hogan's signature tune, we unpack how a piece of 1980s excess became a cultural touchstone - and political football.

We also talk about Rick Derringer's extensive musical career and connections, the origins and evolution of "Real American"; WWE's "Rock and Wrestling Connection" era in the mid to late 80s; the song's political appropriation across decades; Hulk Hogan's controversial legacy and recent passing; the music video's gloriously over-the-top 80s aesthetic and more.

Let’s fight for the right of every man. Or everyone, depending on the version you prefer.

Episode Highlights

00:00 - Introduction and Hulk Hogan's recent cultural relevance

Like us, are you somewhat uncomfortable of about Pantera playing with Metallica? Why exactly might that be? We need to explore what it is about Phil Anselmo that gives people that icky feeling.

This week we try to put some meat on the bones about the rumours that have dogged Anselmo for the last three decades of his career. White supremacist? Racist? Just a bit of a steamer?  What is it about this guy that has gotten him this reputation? Is it merited? And if it is merited, do we have any sort of obligation to act on that?

The Pattern of Behaviour

It's an issue that's dogged Phil throughout his career, but came into sharp focus at the conclusion of the Dimebash concert in 2016. The thing is though, focusing too much on that fiasco is that it allows flimsy and bad faith justifications. Too much alcohol is one. "Oh, he was just trolling" is another. They've been fairly successfully passed off as excuses for not just his misdeeds that night, but his behaviour more generally.

That smokescreen has enabled millions of paying Pantera fans to handwave away the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Denial is a powerful thing, especially when a band is so intrinsically tied up in the carefully guarded nostalgia of countless nineties teenhoods.

Anselmo's history with white supremacist rhetoric and imagery goes back a long way. It's been scattered, downplayed, obfuscated to such an extent that it's easy to lose track. We gather all those details in one place so you can make better informed decisions about where you spend your money and what sort of behaviour we seek to excuse on literally the biggest of the world's stages.

Episodes Referenced

Our interview with former white supremacist turned anti-extremist advocate Arno Michaelis: https://bleav.com/shows/unsung-podcast/episodes/in-session-12-arno-michaelis-author-anti-extremism-activist-and-former-white-nationalist-side-a-360/

Slayer - South of Heaven: https://bleav.com/shows/unsung-podcast/episodes/episode-203-south-of-heaven-by-slayer/

Highlights

00:14 Why Pantera Supporting Metallica Feels Wrong

01:02 Your Money is Your Vote: Consumer Responsibility

01:54 The Pattern Begins: Early Controversial Incidents

03:42 The Dimebash Incident: Sieg Heil on Stage

06:07 A Decades-Long History of Problematic Behaviour

21:03 Confederate Flags: Heritage Not Hate?

25:27 Dog Whistles and Lyrical Controversies

30:32 The Night Everything Changed: Dimebash 2016

31:28 What Actually Happened at the Concert

31:50 Rob Flynn Breaks Ranks

32:55 The Silence Before the Storm

33:57 From 0% to 1000% Apologetic in Three Days

35:15 The Metal Press: Complicit in the Cover-Up?

36:58 Is Metal's "Radical Freedom" Part of the Problem?

38:12 Who Is Phil Anselmo Really?

53:31 Making Informed Choices as Music Consumers

Support the Show

You can support Unsung via Patreon at www.patreon.com/unsungpod. Join at the lower tier for bonus content, early access, and our closed members group where you can suggest episodes. Or join the record club where you get sent records by independent bands from independent labels.

You may have seen the AI band The Velvet Sundown pop up in the news recently and thought "well, that's weird". Long-time fans of the pod probably also thought "when are they going to do an episode on that?" Well, here it is!

If you've been following us for a while you'll know that every 18 months or so we seem to return to broader discussions about where music and technology intersect. It began with an episode on Threatin (if you remember who Threatin is, well done) and how one man's quest for fame led to him faking a massive fanbase. A quest that ended with him playing to empty rooms across the UK, and saw him trying to retcon it into some kind of art hoax.

Later, we discussed what a possible future using AI music might look like in March 2019, looking at the early attempts to create artificial intelligence music and how the data given to streaming platforms could very well be used to create music. An episode that is now quite prescient in retrospect. Mark was actually quite optimistic that a Velvet Sundown-esque AI band scenario would not come to pass. How naïve...

And then in October 2023 we took a two episode deep dive into Spotify playlist manipulation, and how it began way back in the early days of radio with payola. Spotify algorithm manipulation plays a huge role in how the person/entity behind The Velvet Sundown was able to gain so much traction so quickly - reaching 1.1 million plays and potentially earning £35,000+ annually.

This week's episode continues this tradition. We cover some old ground in places (the history of AI music and playlist manipulation), but for the vast majority of the episode we break new ground. We look at the hard numbers around what this synthetic music "artist" stands to make, examine other AI-generated bands like Anna Indiana, The Devil Inside, and Aventhis, ponder both the inventive and interesting uses of artificial intelligence in music as well as the more troubling ones, and look at some possible futures in the wake of all this AI band controversy.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube, if that's your thing. Link is here: https://youtu.be/04mYK3G4x5k

If you've enjoyed this episode, do consider subscribing to our Patreon at www.patreon.com/unsungpod

00:00 Introduction to The Velvet Sundown

00:36 AI in Music: From Skynet to Rei Toei

01:35 The Rise of The Velvet Sundown

03:05 AI Bands and Their Impact

07:33 History of AI in Music

17:18 Modern AI Music Innovations

33:31 The Future of AI in Music

36:10 Financial Implications of AI Bands

42:05 The Impact of AI on Job Replacement

43:43 The Uncanny Valley in AI Music

45:07 Genres and AI's Ability to Mimic Them

49:57 AI's Influence on Modern Music Production

55:21 The Rise of AI in Country Music

59:24 The Future of AI in the Music Industry

01:07:19 Ethical and Regulatory Concerns

01:21:34 Concluding Thoughts on AI in Music

This week we're talking about US Maple. Which is a bit like saying we're talking about having your teeth drilled without anaesthetic.

The Chicago quartet spent twelve years making music that deliberately disappointed every expectation you might have about rock music. They took guitars, drums, and vocals and somehow made them sound like they were arguing with each other in a language nobody understood. It was brilliant. It was infuriating. It was absolutely necessary.

This is the final part of our Anti Rock trilogy, where we've been exploring bands that knew the rules of rock music inside out and chose to break every single one of them. US Maple didn't just break the rules though. They took the rulebook, fed it through a modified guitar with quarter tone frets, and sang over it like a demented lounge singer having a breakdown.

We get into their impossible discography, their custom instruments that were designed to sound worse, their legendary tour with Pavement where they got pelted with rubbish nightly, and that infamous Oklahoma City incident involving Xanax and a cockroach. We also try to answer the eternal question: why would anyone voluntarily listen to this?

Fair warning: this episode might make you feel slightly seasick. That's entirely by design.

Featuring Ferruccio Quercetti from the brilliant Italian band Cut, who knows more about post punk and experimental music than literally anyone we know.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

This week we're diving headfirst into the gloriously pretentious world of No Wave - the three-year New York art scene that somehow managed to influence everything that followed. Chris has somehow convinced Mark and our resident Italian punk professor Ferro to explore how a bunch of art school dropouts in a financially bankrupt New York accidentally created one of music's most important movements.

We start with New York City in 1978: a proper shithole where you'd genuinely risk your life getting a taxi to Brooklyn, Times Square was basically a war zone, and the city had literally gone bankrupt. Perfect conditions, as it turns out, for a load of bohemian kids to move in, pay bugger all rent, and start making the most deliberately difficult music imaginable.

Enter Brian Eno, who's meant to be in New York producing Talking Heads like a normal person, but instead wanders into some art space gig and discovers bands like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, Mars, and The Contortions doing something completely mental. Being Brian Eno, he obviously decides to document the whole thing, creating the legendary "No New York" compilation that basically put the entire movement on the map.

We get properly stuck into the key figures: Lydia Lunch being an absolute force of nature in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance slapping music critics (literally - he assaulted Robert Christgau), and the various weirdos who decided that what punk really needed was to be even more antagonistic to its audience.

Ferro brings his encyclopaedic knowledge of the European connections, particularly the parallels between New York's urban decay and Berlin's post-war experimental scene. We explore how Einstürzende Neubauten were literally destroying studio floors with sledgehammers whilst Throbbing Gristle were essentially inventing industrial music in their Yorkshire squat.

The conversation sprawls magnificently through Swans' absolutely punishing early albums, the way Sonic Youth emerged from this scene, and how bands like Bush Tetras and Rat at Rat R kept the torch burning. We also dive into some proper tangents about Madonna apparently being in an art punk band with future Swans members (mental) and how this whole movement influenced everything from the Load Records noise rock scene to modern post-metal.

This is part two of our anti-rock trilogy. Last week we tackled the prehistory from musique concrète to Captain Beefheart, and next week we'll finally get to US Maple and try to explain why anyone would voluntarily subject themselves to their particular brand of musical torture.

00:00 Introduction to No Wave and Brian Eno's Influence

This week we're tackling the wonderfully niche concept of anti-rock. Or more specifically, we're trying to work out what the hell it actually is, why Google doesn't seem to know either, and how it connects to everything from Frank Zappa taking the piss out of The Beatles to bands who are so talented they deliberately make themselves sound rubbish.

Chris has dragged poor Mark and our resident punk professor Ferro down a rabbit hole that starts with French composers banging bits of concrete in the 1940s and somehow ends up at US Maple, a band that sounds like they're actively trying to annoy you. Along the way we encounter Captain Beefheart's deliberately mental Trout Mask Replica, The Residents being mysterious weirdos in eyeball masks, and Suicide essentially inventing electronic music with what amounts to a homemade fuzz box.

We get properly stuck into the prehistory of experimental music, from Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrète through to the New York art scene of the 1970s. Our main thesis is that anti-rock isn't just noise for the sake of it - it's what happens when genuinely skilled musicians decide to systematically tear apart rock conventions from the inside. Think of it as punk's more cerebral, art school cousin who's read too much Derrida.

This is part one of three. Next week we'll tackle the No Wave explosion in late 70s New York, and part three will finally explain why US Maple exist and why anyone would voluntarily listen to them. We also touch on Glenn Branca's guitar symphonies, Pere Ubu's Cleveland weirdness, and try to work out why some of the most influential experimental music came from artists who could absolutely play it straight if they wanted to. Spoiler: they definitely didn't want to.

Timestamps:

Episode Highlights:

This week we're diving into the wonderfully gloomy world of Emma Ruth Rundle. Or more specifically, we're having a bit of a discussion whether she's actually goth or not, what goth even means, and how it may be broader than some think. Musically, Chris thinks most of her catalogue is a bit pants but she has artistic integreity. Mark reckons she's brilliant.

Emma Ruth Rundle has spent her career shape-shifting between projects like some sort of musical chameleon with commitment issues. From her early folk-gaze days with The Nocturnes to her brief stint with post-rock titans Red Sparrows. From the overlooked Marriages project to her increasingly experimental solo work. She's never been one to stay in her lane. The question is: does all this reinvention actually work, or is it just restless artist syndrome?

We get deep into the weeds of her entire discography. Our main focus is 2016's "Marked for Death", which Mark insists is her masterpiece and Chris... well, Chris has opinions. We also tackle the thorny question of what actually constitutes "goth" in 2025. Spoiler: it's probably not what you think. Plus we discuss her genuinely unnerving experimental albums. And try to work out why Sargent House thought it was a good idea to send a recovering alcoholic to record alone in the desert. With unlimited booze.

Episode Highlights:

This week we're talking about the Leeds band Vessels. Or more specifically we're talking about their quite abrupt change from identikit post rock band to something a lot more electronic and a lot more enticing.

By their own admission, Vessels had something of a problem: the band had to evolve or die. They were trapped making the same post rock songs as everyone else, using the same delay pedals, creating the same "emotional" buildups that made grown men in plaid shirts cry. So they did something radical: they put down their guitars and picked up synthesisers.

The result was Dilate, an album that lost them some fans but gained them something more valuable - an actual identity. In this episode, we not only get into the weeds of their discography (as we always do), but we also talk about post rock generally, as well as the band's history, their decision to turn to live electronic, how much of a nightmare that actually can be to pull off live, the influence that Berlin clubs had on their new direction, and so much more.

Episode highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Setup

This week Dave returns as we dive into our bag of covermount CDs and unearth a real gem.

Casey wasn't messing about. He whittled down his selection from 60 songs, phoned Henry Rollins and Satyr personally for unreleased tracks, and designed the cover himself. The result was 26 tracks of whiplash-inducing genius that introduced countless metal and punk fans to bands they'd never have discovered otherwise. From Refused's "New Noise" and Iron Monkey's feral sludge to birthday party's pre-Bad Seeds insanity and proper OG punk from Discharge and X-Ray Specs, this was cultural education disguised as a free CD. The fact we're still dissecting every track choice 20+ years later proves Casey achieved something genuinely special - a compilation that worked as both a history lesson and a challenge to dig deeper into the underground.