[00:15] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:18] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City.

[00:24] Meg: Where we still live and where we podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines and.

[00:30] Jessica: I do pop culture. Speaking of which, we did a little piece about the Lunachicks. And I neglected to say that they have a book out called, amusingly, Fallopian Rhapsody.

[00:43] Meg: Hysterical.

[00:43] Jessica: And it's by them about them, about their unwitting, or rather unplanned roles as feminist icons. They were punk rockers. They came out of New York City in the LaGuardia Performing Arts High School. Super cool. And if you want some real fun, they have actually narrated their own audiobook so you can find it wherever you download your audiobooks.

[01:08] Meg: I love that.

Meg: So we are jumping right in because we both have substantial stories to tell today.

[01:25] Jessica: Okay.

[01:26] Meg: All right.

[01:27] Jessica: Yes, I'm ready.

[01:28] Meg: My engagement question. Did you have a favorite professor in college or someone you just, like, super connected with?

[01:37] Jessica: My memory is so bad these days that I'm not drawing a blank, but there's like a couple. But I really, really liked my advisor in the English department, Professor Sharp.

[01:48] Meg: Awesome. Lovely. All right. My sources are New York Magazine, New York Times, and Criminal Podcast. In the summer of 1980, friends and colleagues of Dr. John Buettner-Janusch received photocopied letters in which BJ. That was his nickname, claimed the government was framing him. His trial was due to begin in June and he was preparing his defense. BJ was the 55 year old chairman of the anthropology department at NYU and was renowned for his studies on lemurs. But he had been accused of manufacturing LSD, quaaludes, and synthetic cocaine in NYU's two thousand dollar lab at 25 Waverly Place.

[02:45] Jessica: Wait, the lab cost two thousand dollars? That's the whole.

[02:48] Meg: No. Did I say two thousand? No. Two hundred thousand.

[02:51] Jessica: Okay.

[02:51] Meg: So sorry. And he was also accused of getting his students to help him. They were his labor.

[03:00] Jessica: I'm sure they were very happy to do that.

[03:03] Meg: Some of them were doing it without even knowing what they were doing.

[03:05] Jessica: Oh, for God's sakes.

[03:07] Meg: In the letters he circulated, he called the prosecutor a "Nazi Whore". And the raid on his lab, "an atrocity resembling Kristallnacht during the Third Reich." Did I pronounce that correctly?

[03:24] Jessica: You. You were wonderful.

[03:26] Meg: He said the judge, Charles Brieant, was, quote, determined to let this corrupt and vile set of charges come to trial. Now, BJ was known for his florid language, which was well documented when a couple of his students wore wires and caught him on tape.

[03:44] Jessica: Oops.

[03:44] Meg: These are a couple of quotes. "You are as amoral as the rest of us. And therefore I can tell you that we are going to make quaaludes in the laboratory. Money is money, so who cares?"

[03:56] Jessica: I mean, that's pretty damning. Yeah.

[03:59] Meg: And how about this one? "If you are quizzed by the prosecutor before he interrogates you, go ahead and take some tranquilizers, because then you can deny charges without giving yourself away, even if you're taking a lie detector test."

[04:12] Jessica: Coaching the witness. Bad. Bad.

[04:16] Meg: But you might wonder, why would a respected quote. Brilliant. Everyone was like, oh, my God, he's the smartest guy I ever met. All right.

[04:24] Jessica: The Lemur man.

[04:25] Meg: Wealthy academic risk his reputation and freedom in such a bold way.

[04:31] Jessica: I would ask myself that.

[04:33] Meg: He didn't even have a distribution plan. He was making the drugs. And then like, ah, this.

[04:40] Jessica: This guy needs to get hooked up with some of the other people that you've talked about on this podcast. He needed a. A little SE seminar.

[04:48] Meg: Well, let's back up.

[04:49] Jessica: Okay.

[04:50] Meg: As I mentioned before, BJ loved lemurs. He was one of the first Americans to study lemurs. And he had about 90 of them at Yale, where he taught for seven years. So we're going back a couple decades. Yale, though, didn't offer him tenure, so he took his lemurs to Duke.

[05:12] Jessica: He just packed up the lemurs and went, yeah, that's actually. There's like. That's a great cartoon. Go ahead.

[05:17] Meg: At the time, Duke was studying the mother child relationship in goats and deer, but BJ Convinced them to use his lemurs as subjects instead. And that's how the Duke Lemur Center was born, which is still there.

[05:35] Jessica: Okay.

[05:36] Meg: BJ and his wife, Vina Mallowitz, an accomplished biochemist, thrived at Duke. It was there that he published Origins of Man and solidified his reputation as one of the nation's most most respected anthropologists. But Durham wasn't cosmopolitan enough for BJ he liked to have lavish dinner parties with uniform butlers. He wanted to go to the ballet and the opera. Fortunately, Vina inherited a small fortune when her parents died. So BJ And Vina left the Lemurs in North Carolina.

[06:13] Jessica: He abandoned the lemurs and moved to.

[06:16] Meg: An apartment overlooking Washington Square park and the Anthropology Department at NYU.

[06:23] Jessica: Yes, he did.

[06:24] Meg: He left the Lemurs.

[06:26] Jessica: That is really weird.

[06:28] Meg: He said he would keep going back and taking blood from the Lemurs to use in his experiments that he was doing in at NYU. But really, he left him his life's work.

[06:41] Jessica: Yeah. He was ready to live the high life with uniformed butlers.

[06:47] Meg: And this was in 1973. Okay. Now, his colleagues, his new colleagues at NYU weren't too excited to have him because, as you might have picked up, he was kind of an asshole.

[07:02] Jessica: He sounds like a complete wanker.

[07:04] Meg: According to a fellow professor, quote, "BJ was tyrannical and vindictive in the extreme. He seemed set against me. But because he'd heard I'd opposed his coming to NYU and it wasn't even true. But that was the way he was. He was a man who couldn't brook even the hint or rumor of disloyalty."

[07:26] Jessica: Sounds familiar.

[07:28] Meg: He does sound familiar, doesn't he?

[07:30] Jessica: Yes, he does.

[07:32] Meg: BJ was also described as "flamboyant" and "outrageous." He had an air of. And I'm interested if you've ever heard this phrase before. It was new to me, but now I'm going to use it.

[07:47] Jessica: All right.

[07:47] Meg: "Epater les bourgeois"

[07:50] Jessica: No, I've never heard that before.

[07:53] Meg: If you have an air of épater les bourgeois. It means you just love to shock people. It gets you off to do things that make people go, oh, I can't.

[08:05] Jessica: Believe you did that. A provocateur.

[08:09] Meg: He wore bright, expensive suits and huge horn rim glasses. He dyed his hair blonde and wore a large button that read, "I'd Rather Be in Paris." He signed his letters "Lemur-logically yours."

[08:23] Jessica: What a douche.

[08:25] Meg: I actually thought that was kind of funny and charming. That was the most charming thing he ever did.

[08:31] Jessica: But also disingenuous because he left the lemurs in Durham.

[08:35] Meg: So when he was being a dick, he was outraged that the NYU memos used the term chairperson rather than chairman. Okay, quote, "please change this form. Stop defiling the English language with a vulgar neologism, which I have corrected above."

[08:59] Jessica: Was he the chairman?

[09:01] Meg: Yeah. Things were actually going very well for BJ in New York. I mean, what's not to like? You're the chairman of the department and you're finally able to go to the opera every night until 1977. And I actually think it might have. The wheels might have started falling off the wagon a little earlier than that, but 1977, definitively not a good year. Vina started complaining about abdominal pains. She went in for surgery, and she did not survive this surgery. Her sudden death was a shock to everyone because she'd seemed so healthy and vibrant and then suddenly she was dead, like, completely out of the blue.

[09:49] Jessica: Terrifying.

[09:51] Meg: BJ's research, which had slowed considerably since coming to New York, stopped cold. He was spending many late nights in gay bars in the West Village.

[10:03] Jessica: Well, I was going to ask you before if the word flamboyant was. It was chosen by you as, like.

[10:10] Meg: No, it was a quote, foreshadowing. I took it from the article. Somebody described him as flamboyant, but that person in that particular article did not know he was gay. All this is really, when it starts adding up, you're like, oh, my God.

[10:26] Jessica: Well, it's also interesting. The way that you described his look is so David Hockney that it's kind of like right out of, you know, the playbook.

[10:35] Meg: So he comes to New York, right, And he kind of isn't really doing his job. He didn't even really show up at classes much. Okay, okay. Like, he's. Things are shifting for him. And then his wife dies, all right? And guess what? He finally lost funding from the National Science Foundation because they looked and said, you're not doing the research you claimed you were doing, so we're not giving you any money.

[11:03] Jessica: And furthermore, the lemurs are in Durham. I'm obsessed with the lemurs.

[11:07] Meg: He did have an explanation for that, just so you know. Except, you know, then it wasn't a good enough explanation for the National Science Foundation. They were like, yeah, you're not even doing something with the lemur blood that you're bringing back from Duke, so stop with that. But remember, he doesn't even need money because now that his wife died, he inherited all of her money, right? So it's just sort of embarrassing, really.

[11:31] Jessica: More butlers for him.

[11:32] Meg: It wasn't two years later that he was accused of using his lab to make party drugs.

[11:37] Jessica: For the gay bars that he frequented. Maybe.

[11:42] Meg: BJ was convicted and sent to federal prison, where he wrote for the prison newsletter, Doin Times.

[11:51] Jessica: Stop it. I can't right now. It's so great. It's so good. It's so wonderful.

[11:57] Meg: He kept up his pretense in jail, calling his fellow inmates, his colleagues, and he kept up his correspondence, writing to one friend, quote, I will certainly take the most awful revenge upon certain people. The Greeks are correct. Blood is a corrective for many wrongs.

[12:16] Jessica: Good Lord.

[12:18] Meg: He was paroled in 1983, seems like a mistake. And moved to Wisconsin, which was his home state. He stayed there for a little bit. He gardened and baked. He perfected his skills as a gourmet chef. He'd always Loved to cook for people. He grew weary of Wisconsin and was able to finagle a series of couch surfing pet sitting opportunities, which landed him back in Greenwich Village on February 13, 1987.

[12:49] Jessica: So does he. Has he run through the money? Is this why he's couch surfing?

[12:53] Meg: I don't know. I mean, he didn't buy a place in New York. He was just staying with friends.

[12:59] Jessica: Okay.

[13:00] Meg: That was the day on February 13, 1987. The day that Judge Charles Brieant's wife, Virginia opened a box of Golden Godiva chocolates that were delivered to their home in Westchester County. There was a Valentine's Day card on the box addressed to the judge and Virginia and signed with a question mark. Virginia ate four pieces of chocolate and collapsed. Her husband found her unconscious and rushed her to the hospital. Thankfully, she recovered, but it was a really close call. The chocolates had been poisoned with a variety of substances. Deadly nightshade, sparteine, which is used to induce labor. Pilocarpine hydrochloride, used to treat glaucoma. The box had been mailed from a post office in Greenwich Village. Also, BJ's fingerprint was on the box.

[14:02] Jessica: Oh, BJ. Good Lord.

[14:05] Meg: On February 19, 1987, BJ went to the Met to see Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, which is an opera about revenge and attempted murder.

[14:16] Jessica: Nice staying on brand.

[14:19] Meg: He was arrested when he got back to his friend's Greenwich Village apartment. This time he pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years. Turns out he'd also sent boxes to former colleagues, but those were intercepted, so no one else was harmed. It turns out there was one chocolate in the box that would have been deadly immediately.

[14:43] Jessica: So he was playing a little roulette.

[14:45] Meg: Yeah. He wanted someone to die.

[14:47] Jessica: Yeah.

[14:47] Meg: For real.

[14:48] Jessica: Yeah.

[14:49] Meg: In prison. He started working on a new book about lemurs, but he died of AIDS just five years into his sentence. Now, this is interesting. I think so. See what you have to say. Before the sentencing. In his first trial, Linda Wolfe wrote about him in New York Magazine. So that article was written, like, during the trial? His first trial. Right. So this is like when he was just. This is just about the drug manufacturing. This is before he did anything else. And Linda Wolfe wrote, quote, "there exist in society certain individuals who believe themselves to be endowed with such extravagant, even imperial, intelligence that they feel it is their destiny to conquer worlds, cancel the rules by which ordinary mortals live. Safety seems banal. Outwitting society becomes their hobby."

[15:51] Jessica: She was right.

[15:53] Meg: Crazy, right? You know what I was thinking about?

[15:56] Jessica: Okay.

[15:56] Meg: I've been mulling over this a lot over the last few days. I mean, there's so much of it that reminds me of my father, obviously. You know, I mean, my God. And that everybody calls him, you know, frequently in my lifetime, people have said, your father is the smartest person I've ever met. You know, I'm like, really? "Did he tell you that?" I'm not saying that he's not smart, but I do think that there's a type of person who walks around saying, "I'm brilliant. I'm a genius." And what I think is interesting is that people don't really test that. They take it on face value. And the people who are walking around and saying that about themselves might have a little bit of a personality disorder. Just.

[16:44] Jessica: Just a touch of the crazy.

[16:46] Meg: I also thought it was interesting that there was this tinge of male supremacy. You know what I mean?

[16:53] Jessica: Well, from what you said, more than a tinge. Yeah, certainly.

[16:57] Meg: But isn't that interesting that a lot of these pathological narcissists that. That are being thrown in our face recently have that same tendency?

[17:08] Jessica: Yes. And I have a theory. Well, you and I have talked about this on this podcast before, that Americans hate women, right?

[17:15] Meg: Yeah.

[17:16] Jessica: So if they're trying to set themselves up as apex predators.

[17:21] Meg: Supreme. Yeah, supreme.

[17:23] Jessica: Start by subjugating the people who everyone agrees should be under you. So saying that women are less than is like, you're priming the pump. It's like, yeah, you're right. Yeah, you are better than those people. You're. So by the time they get into their full swing of "I'm the king of the world," then they've already set down a base of people saying, "I'd buy that. Okay, I'd agree with that." So, you know, I think. I mean, think about incels, like, all of the he man women-haters, clubs, they're there because they feel weak and they think that they're picking on the easiest to pick on, to like to climb on top of, to be taller.

[18:11] Meg: In his obituary, it barely. Barely mentions his crimes, which is crazy to me. It's almost like he wrote his own obituary. And I don't put it past him that he did, that somehow he managed to send in a version of his obituary that was eventually published in the New York Times that talks about how brilliant and how amazing and how incredible he is. And, yeah, he went to prison a couple times, like, basically for poisoning people. But anyway, like WHAT?

[18:44] Jessica: Yeah, well, I mean, is it surprising that he would have had a plan? I mean, I think you're right.

[18:49] Meg: And how about this?

[18:50] Jessica: Oh, gosh.

[18:52] Meg: I think he killed his wife. You heard it here first.

[18:55] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[18:56] Meg: He poisoned his wife.

[18:57] Jessica: It was a wife. I think you're right. It's a trial run. He got the money, and he's figuring out how. Phoebe.

[19:04] Meg: Phoebe. On the Criminal Podcast. She did not hint at that. This is groundbreaking. I connected the dots. I think it's true.

[19:13] Jessica: We heard it here first.

[19:15] Meg: Swear on my life, when I told Joe some of these things. I mean, granted, I already sort of had a feeling like that was really what had happened. He was like, I think he killed his wife. And I was like, I think so too. And if you look at the timeline, it makes so much sense.

[19:29] Jessica: Wait, so what year did she die?

[19:31] Meg: 1977.

[19:33] Jessica: And that's when the wheels started falling off with him?

[19:36] Meg: Well, the way that they sort of tell the story is that that's when the wheels first fell off. But that's not true. He'd been cooking things in the lab before that. He also had abandoned his research before that. I think the wheels started falling off when he came to New York, frankly, coming to New York, I was just gonna say, was the wheel falling off, Abandoning the lemurs?

[19:58] Jessica: Yeah, that's the detail I can't get. If your life's work is whatever, whatever, and you leave it, like, meh. Just behind, and you're not. You're not replacing it with anything substantive, there's something wrong with you. Yeah, there's something wrong. He's broken.

[20:18] Meg: Thank you for indulging me because. Yeah, this has been a week of pathological narcissism in my head, so that's been fun.

[20:25] Jessica: Mm.

[20:27] Meg: I'm trying to have it be therapeutic, and I'd like to close out with a fun lemur fact.

[20:32] Jessica: I love that. That's where you're going with this.

[20:36] Meg: Lemurs pee on their little bitty paws and mark wherever they go with their little handprints.

[20:45] Jessica: Of pee.

[20:46] Meg: Of pee. Which is why it's kind of a bummer to have a pet lemur.

[20:54] Jessica: You just reminded me of one of my friends from college, John B. Goode. Once watched my first dog, Oscar pee and then walk through it and then track it into the house. And he named him Little Pissfoot for the rest of his life. Little Pissfoot. Little Pissfoot. Little Piss Paw. Little Piss Paw. You lemurs are Lil Piss Paw.

Jessica: Okay, so this is part two of the dominatrix scenario.

[21:31] Meg: Okay.

[21:31] Jessica: Okay.

[21:32] Meg: Awesome. I've been on pins and needles all week.

[21:35] Jessica: I sincerely doubt that that's true. Really? Yes. Aww. So this is not about a particular. Well, it is about a particular dominatrix. But we're now segueing into the 1984 hit The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight.

[21:50] Meg: Oh, right. That was such a dot, dot, dot there.

[21:52] Jessica: Yes, exactly. Because when I found this story, it was so crazy. And I was like, I can't fit this in with the other stuff because it's so its own thing.

[22:04] Meg: I feel like that's happening more and more with us, that we start on one thing and then there's a rabbit hole that it's like, whoa, wait, wait, you can't do it all in one go.

[22:13] Jessica: Yes, absolutely. And I think that the ones that I do that are the worst are the ones where I'm like. And then this happened. But let me tell you about this other thing over here. And then this. So I have made them into two segments now. Let's talk about it.

[22:26] Meg: Awesome.

[22:27] Jessica: Okay. In 1980, the band Ike Yard was formed in New York City. Now, the name Ike Yard, it comes from A Clockwork Orange in the book, I think also in the movie, the Droogs are in a record store and one of the records there is by a fictional band called Ike Yard. So this band decides they're gonna call themselves that. But deep cut, keep that in your head, because there's a double meaning, in my opinion. So this band is a No Wave band. We've talked about No Wave before, but it's like on the heels of new wave. It's atonal, it's more jazz oriented. It's like the Art of Noise was No Wave. Bands like the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. My favorite band name ever. Theoretical Girls, Tone Death. Another great one, The Lounge Lizards, fronted by the amazing John Lurie, who was pretty much dabbling successfully in every art form imaginable and recognizable from Jim Jarmusch movies such as Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law and the precursor of Coffee in Cars. Fishing with John, where he would go fishing and he would bring celebrities with him. So these are all the bands that were the No Wave kind of out there now. Ike Yard, in this world was actually signed by a record label. They were signed by Factory Records, very famous label from Manchester, started by Tony Wilson, producer and presenter on Granada TV and the subject of the film 24 Hour Party People, and the creation of Factory Records and his club, the Hacienda Club, out of which came Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays, OMD and others. Okay, so Ike Yard is now in that world. They do a few things and then Like a lot of other Factory Records bands, like A Certain Ratio, they dissolve.

[24:34] Meg: Okay.

[24:34] Jessica: They're done. And.

[24:35] Meg: Sorry, I should follow this. They are British.

[24:38] Jessica: No, they're New Yorkers.

[24:40] Meg: Okay.

[24:41] Jessica: Actually, East Coasters, as you will see, in 1983, the person who founded Ike Yard starts this new band. His name is Richard Argabright, and he forms a new band called Dominatrix. Now they get signed quickly to Streetwise Records, and in 1984, they released the hit, the club hit, The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight. It's a dance track with spoken word narrative over the music, similar to. And I just have to add this, there are a couple of people who we know who are friends of the podcast, who will be like, you went down that road. But I have to. In 1989, Malcolm McLaren, king of stealing other people's ideas, released a record that I really like, Walt's Darling. And on it is one of my favorite songs, Something's Jumping in Your Shirt, sung by. Get ready for this one. Lisa Marie, the gorgeous actress who was with Tim Burton, who was in Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, and Mars Attacks. Crazy. Yes. So gorgeous. Wonderful. This is what they're doing. So anyway, they broke ground with this kind of presentation. Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight was doomed to stay on the fringes. It never became the hit that it should have been. Why? We have talked many times on this podcast about how you could live or die by MTV at the time, particularly if you're an emerging band.

[26:21] Meg: Absolutely.

[26:21] Jessica: Their video was directed by avant garde director Beth B. Keep this in mind. She's out on the fringe. She directs this video. She's all about female empowerment. That works with the Dominatrix theme. Clearly, MTV and other music video outlets say that it is way too scandalous and they're just not gonna air it. They got zero airplay.

[26:47] Meg: Can we find it?

[26:48] Jessica: Oh, yes. It's very easily found. And what's so funny is, of course, by current standards, it's so corny. Like, it is the corniest corn cob in Corntown. It's like, oh, my God, she's wearing stockings and garters. Is she wearing a corset and carrying a whip that she does not use on anybody? Are there men in leather tank tops? Hmm. That seems racy. And she's wearing a wig and changes her personality when she puts on a new one. That's scary. But it eventually did break on the dance floor in New York City clubs. The only other thing I will say about the video, and you're saying, why, you know, can it still Be seen. Why? Yes, because Beth B.'s work was acquired by MoMA to put in their permanent collection. She was part of the small gauge filmmaking scene. She also did videos for Cabaret Voltaire and New Order, and her work is now celebrated.

[27:52] Meg: I mean, I don't want to speak out my butt, but I think that name sounds very familiar.

[27:57] Jessica: I think when you look her up, which may or may not, it will resonate. Oh, my God. She did that. Oh, okay. So anyway, how did all of this happen? Why is this band in existence? Why did they get signed? Why did they do this thing? Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight, which is also kind of a little bit of a joke about The Lion Sleeps Tonight, "A wimb away," all of that stuff. Well, in 1977, Richard Argabright, who was a teenager, decides to hitchhike to a show, and he lives in D.C. and he gets picked up by a woman in a red Corvette, which seems unlikely, but indeed it happened. And this woman is a dominatrix. And he's intrigued by the stories that she has to tell. And she says that she specializes in dealing with powerful men, particularly corporate lawyers, who like being peed on. One of the ways that he is earning money at the time is as a landscaper. Ike Yard.

[29:00] Meg: Ah.

[29:02] Jessica: Anyway, he was actually in Virginia. She gets him to the concert in D.C. very exciting. And while they're hanging out, she tells him that she is involved with a Soviet spy who wants to defect. And he's like, okay, well, that's just crazy. Whatever. He then runs into her a year later in New York City in a bar. And she's like, oh, yeah, the CIA are onto this now. Yes. And they have whisked this Soviet lover of hers away, and there's no more discussion about the Soviet lover. But she's completely earnest. And he's like, okay, all right, sure, whatever. Sure. The bar that he runs into her, by the way, it's not a bar. It's Max's Kansas City. And it's in 1978. So after his band, Ike Yard, Landscaper - Yard, get it? Breaks up, he is stabbed.

[30:02] Meg: By who?

[30:03] Jessica: In a snowball fight when he's on his way to Danceteria. So he's on the low, he's in the East Village, and a random stabs him. I know.

[30:14] Meg: Wait. Crazy. Okay, wait. Snowball fight and a stabbing at the same time?

[30:18] Jessica: In a snowball fight on his way to Danceteria. He's having fun, and next thing he knows, he's been stabbed.

[30:25] Meg: Okay. By someone not involved in the fight.

[30:27] Jessica: Not. He doesn't know who it is. But he goes to West Berlin to recover, as one does, and while he's convalescing. He remembers his Dom friend who told him about what she and her friends would do to entertainment lawyers and record executives. Peeing, whipping, spanking, humiliating. This inspires him. He writes a new song. He sends the demo for The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight to the DJ at Pyramid Club. Ivan, Ivan. Ivan. Ivan loves it and sends it to the head of Uproar Records. Now, after that happened and like there's interest, he comes back to New York and they do a real recording of the song at the studio of one of the members of the band, Tangerine Dream. Tangerine Dream may not be your thing. They're also kind of experimental, all instrumental. But you do know their music because they did Risky Business, the score for Risky Business.

[31:32] Meg: Fascinating.

[31:33] Jessica: And do you remember the scene where they're having sex on the L train?

[31:37] Meg: Yes. That's Tangerine Dream.

[31:39] Jessica: That's Tangerine Dream.

[31:40] Meg: That had an impact.

[31:41] Jessica: Did it not! So anyway, they do this new recording and they take it to the Unique Recording Studio in New York City in Times Square. What they did with Tangerine Dream was a 16 track. They then add another 24 tracks to it. So this is now becoming a very complicated dance song.

[32:02] Meg: My, my.

[32:04] Jessica: The record label brings in Norby Walters. Norby Walters is an agent and gets live shows for bands. So great. So the agent, her name is Cara Lewis. This is one of her very first gigs. She got them a gig at the Paradise Garage, a perfect place for a dance hit like this to get picked up. Which it did. They performed with Run DMC. What? Yes. Cara Lewis continued her rise to power, basically focusing on rap and hip hop. And she signed Queen Latifah, Outkast, Ludacris, Will Smith, Ice T, NWA, Beastie Boys, Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna, Rita Ora, and is still managing The Roots.

[32:57] Meg: This is like six degrees of separation.

[32:59] Jessica: That's the whole point of this entire thing. There has been research done by many people who are obsessed with the song and with the whole story of, you know, the landscaper with the hit.

[33:10] Meg: Right.

[33:11] Jessica: There's no one has ever found what happened to the defector. Only the CIA and the dominatrix know. Now, the other fun thing, when they first met Richard and the Dominatrix, they were comparing notes because. Or not when they first met, when he was. When they met again at Max's Kansas City. Because now he's landscaping in New York City for, like, people's yards with fancy houses. So turns out that his client list and hers overlap because they're all of these powerful people, including people in the arts such as Mary Tyler Moore and Paul Simon.

[33:54] Meg: Wait, what are you saying about Mary Tyler Moore?

[33:56] Jessica: I'm not saying that Mary Tyler Moore was part of her list. I'm saying he had people on his list like Mary Tyler Moore and Paul Simon. She had more executives.

[34:06] Meg: Okay.

[34:07] Jessica: But he had those two. So that was just another way that these two people connected. So she was the ultimate muse for his one hit.

[34:18] Meg: We can listen to it, right?

[34:19] Jessica: Oh, my God. Yes, you can. You can find it any place.

[34:22] Meg: Let's put it on our playlist Monday.

[34:25] Jessica: Okay, we will put it on the playlist. And I really do encourage everyone to watch the video, because every time for this podcast, I find something that's been banned, you know, oh, it's too risqué. It's too horrific. It's such an incredible reminder of how social mores have slipped in a relatively short period of time. That you're kind of like, you carried a whip, and so it's bad. And now it's like, oh, you stuck that whip up someone's ass. Oh, that's fine. That's gonna get right past the sensors. Not a problem.

[35:01] Meg: But also, what was so terrifying then is now normal in a good way. You know, drag queens are not scary. That's silly to be scared by subversive material.

[35:15] Jessica: Yes, absolutely. I think that. And we've talked about this before, that the many, many different facets of sex positivity have made. Have normalized things that. Yeah, as. As you say, were scary or because they weren't the most vanilla, they couldn't be talked about, so they became more terrifying.

[35:35] Meg: But now we're coming back to that because we missed it. We missed being scared of.

[35:41] Jessica: I don't think. I know. I mean, I do subscribe to the theory that we're going through a. A sort of death rattle of people who are desperately trying to suppress all of the progress that's been made. Because, you know, as you said earlier about standing on.

[36:02] Meg: So this is a death rattle. I believe that it sounds like you have hope.

[36:08] Jessica: Oh, yes. It's the only thing that gives me hope right now.

[36:11] Meg: I actually.

[36:11] Jessica: I've read a whole bunch of articles about this that are very persuasive.

[36:15] Meg: Awesome.

[36:15] Jessica: Admittedly, I now seek them out.

[36:18] Meg: Right, exactly. Algorithm, come to me.

[36:20] Jessica: Yes, exactly.

[36:21] Meg: Give me hope.

[36:23] Jessica: Exactly.

[36:23] Meg: And certainly, you know, if there's a pendulum, when that pendulum swings back, it's gonna be a party.

[36:32] Jessica: It's gonna be so Much fun. I mean, talk about a whip up your ass. There's gonna be like, you know, a parade in the street. Like, you know, Kinks R Us.

Jessica: Okay, so today's tie in is a little bit tenuous. It always is. I know.

[36:58] Meg: When's the last time we had a like, oh my God, I can't believe we're talking about the same thing.

[37:04] Jessica: Well, I mean, yes, but sometimes it's tenuous enough to be like. And they both wore the color green.

[37:12] Meg: Actually, I kind of like the tenuous ones.

[37:14] Jessica: So this one is your guy. I already forgot his name.

[37:20] Meg: Bj.

[37:21] Jessica: Bj? How could I have forgotten? Come on, Jessica, follow thread. I am doing. Well, BJ was obsessed with being outside the norm, like with the way he dressed. And he wanted to be flamboyant and he wanted to be.

[37:38] Meg: épater les bourgeois. Say it with me.

[37:39] Jessica: épater les bourgeois. And that means shock, people. Well, I think that that's what The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight was so kind of doing.

[37:49] Meg: I love it. Are we gonna make épater les bourgeois happen?

[37:53] Jessica: Oh, yes.

[37:54] Meg: Okay, say it.

[37:55] Jessica: épater les bourgeois.

[37:57] Meg: Woo.

[37:57] Jessica: It's not like fetch. It's gonna happen. It's so happening.

[38:00] Meg: It's happening right now.

[38:02] Jessica: We're making it happen. ELB to you.

[38:07] Meg: Nice.

[38:08] Jessica: In short, so.

[38:10] Meg: So. I'm so excited to see you on Monday with all of our friends. It's gonna be so much fun. We're having a party at Malt and Mold, which is on 2nd Avenue and 21st street from 6pm to 9pm and we are celebrating the debut of our YouTube channel. That is kind of exciting. We've got like extra content on that and stuff which we haven't even told you about. And we're going to have fun trivia. And they're going to be. There's going to be merch. We're going to have, you know, giveaways, all kinds of fun things.

[38:48] Jessica: So yeah, come and party.

[38:50] Meg: Oh, oh, and Kevin said 80s beer. I don't even know what that means.

[38:54] Jessica: What is 80s beer?

[38:55] Meg: I do not know.

[38:56] Jessica: Like, all that I can think of is that the cheapest beer in Ohio was Genesee Cream Ale.

[39:02] Meg: Oh my God, that hurts my stomach.

[39:05] Jessica: Yeah, exactly. So that's when I think of 80s beer. That's the first thing. Or Budweiser. Remember how like, intense those Budweiser? Ad campaigns were?

[39:13] Meg: I think of Rolling Rock.

[39:15] Jessica: Well, that was just a cut above Meg. I mean, that was fancy compared to Spuds Mackenzie.

[39:23] Meg: No, no, the ads were great. But like, what did you order in a bar?

[39:28] Jessica: I wasn't drinking beer.

[39:29] Meg: So what were you drinking? Oh, we talked about sloe gin fizzes. That was fun. Kamikazes, sadly. That was rough.

[39:37] Jessica: Yeah, kamikazes.

[39:39] Meg: Red Death, Long Island Iced Teas.

[39:41] Jessica: Long Island Iced Teas. Vodka sours were a thing. And you know, the classic in college, mixing Kool Aid and grain alcohol in a giant garbage.

[39:53] Meg: Every time you talk about Kenyon, I get a little sad for you.

[39:59] Jessica: Very remote. Well, you at Brown, I mean, we had Greek life and Greek life at the time was.

[40:06] Meg: Yeah, there's not really Greek life at Brown.

[40:09] Jessica: No, Kenyon was definitely.

[40:11] Meg: Or whatever there is of it. Vestiges of it. We sort of avoided it. We theater folk.

[40:17] Jessica: No, we were quite Animal House adjacent, for sure. And, you know, you don't know what you don't know. So, you know, I was certainly bombed, thanks to whatever ridiculous party. Oh, I think I. There was a lot of rum consumed. I don't know why.

[40:36] Meg: Again.

[40:37] Jessica: No, I know. No, no, no. I can't drink rum because of what I did to myself freshman year. So. No. Anyway, but come party with us. I know. And we won't vomit on you. We promise.

[40:48] Meg: Kevin has really good beers.

[40:49] Jessica: Yes. Not, I don't know, 80s.

[40:52] Meg: We don't know. He said 80s.

[40:54] Jessica: There's a surprise for everybody.