The Goat Pen

you guys should take time to read this

confessions of the only female roadie

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/conf ... r-tour-bus

Amazon Prime has a documentary about Rick James
My biggest takeaway from watching it is that most white people my age or younger really only know him from the Street Songs album and primarily Super Freak, which in the black community is considered a pop anthem

But Rick James developed a style of music called Pop Funk styled after George Clinton and the British Punk Rock scene, and he ended up selling more albums that Clinton or Bootsy Collins.

At one time Prince was opening up for Rick James on tour and Prince started stealing Rick James act. One of the guitarist in the band at the time was saying they were also concerned with how energetic Prince was in his early 20's and Rick James is pushing 40. He said they all started getting B-12 shots before the shows to try to match Prince's energy. They eventually worked it out but at one point they were sabotaging each others sets to make them look bad.

His career was on a upward trajectory until MTV came out and two things happened

1. one, he developed a $8000 a week crack habit - he expected the record label to provide him with a cocaine budget as part of his video filming he was so blatant about it
2. he got in a pissing contest with MTV about them not playing any black music - which the fallout from basically killed his career. MTV pushed Michael Jackson. His album after Street Songs, Throwin Down generated about 20% of the income that Street Songs did and Rick threw a fit in his record labels office the result of it being that they shut him down and focused on Lionel Richie. No matter how good his following albums were - and the drug habit made sure they weren't going to be very good, he never got any air time or support.

There is a bunch more to the documentary
he was a great production manager who like Prince wrote songs for many artists
He agreed to a probation sentencing for beating up his GF, then between trial and sentencing he beat up a woman stealing cocaine from him, so he went to jail.
He hated rap and threatened to sue MC Hammer until he was told that U Can't Touch This is going to generate several million dollars for him
The Eddie Murphy skit, which he felt was mocking him, he decided to own it and it revived his career a 3rd time , albeit much slower as he had a pace maker and still taking a shitload of drugs that eventually killed him.

finally, in regards to the Eddie Murphy skit, they had a woman who was an aspiring star and they wanted her to partner with Rick similar to Tina Marie, so it was decided she would go live with him for 3 months or so to collaborate. She said he had a wife, partner, GF - she didn't know - living with him and in that entire time she was there, she never got to know her name because all he called her was bitch.

Its definitely worth watching - band members talk openly about orgies, drugs, Charlie Murphy's true Hollywood story seems tame in comparison now.

"His career was on a upward trajectory until MTV came out and two things happened

1. one, he developed a $8000 a week crack habit"

You could've stopped with 1...

true

Jobless rate 8.8%??

Trickle down baby

But but but....he inherited Carters mess!

He inherited Carter's fix to the mess and his idiot followers claimed it as his own. Why is this on the music thread though?

Because IB can't find us here.

Kinda sad.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/phil-collins ... 06853.html

I saw a video of him sitting during a concert last year

He looks kinda like Sardis’s profile picture…

Damn, 71. He looks like he's 95...

speaking of Phil Collins