Song 184: “The Captain’s Fat Theresa Shoes” by the GTOs
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What content warnings and publishing decisions does the host explain at the start of the episode?
Before we begin, this episode contains far more content warnings than most. It contains discussion of underage sex, sexual abuse, drug use and overdose, racism, homophobia, misogyny, basically every single topic that might upset someone. I have, of course, tried to deal with these subjects as sensitively as possible, but not all the material I cover in it does. I will also, quite early on, be quoting a comparison that some Christians may find to be offensive and blasphemous. I want to make clear that when I do so, I am not making that comparison myself, but quoting a subject of the episode doing so. And before I start the episode proper, I have to address something about my podcast itself, which is something I try to refrain from doing, but very occasionally I have to, and I know I will need to head some things off with a portion of my audience.
You see, this podcast is, primarily, a history. A narrative. And the songs I choose to cover in these main episodes are chosen not because of musical merit, or because the songs themselves are important, though many are both great and important records, but because they're the best song for me to focus on in order to tell the next part of the story. But there is a vocal contingent of my listeners who, whenever I cover a song either that they have not heard of before, or which they've heard and don't like, complain vociferously, saying, why does that deserve to get a main episode, when this record I think is more important only got a Patreon bonus, or didn't get covered at all? Now this fundamentally misunderstands the whole process of making these episodes.
I have never once thought about whether a record deserves its place in the narrative. But any time I get a gigantic surge of these complaints, it meaningfully saps my will to continue with this project. And today's episode is on a record that I absolutely know those people will complain about me covering at all, even though it's a crucial one for telling the story. Happily though, when I planned these episodes, I planned this as part of an interrelated trilogy of episodes that would tie together in various ways. And the other two episodes are on records that make all the canonical lists of great albums. So what I've done is I've released one of those two, the next episode on Peaches and Regalia by Frank Zappa, simultaneously with this one.
This is why there's been such a long delay between main episodes, because I had to get multiple episodes created at the same time. So if anyone doesn't want to listen to an episode on a record that you think shouldn't be here on its own merit, just go and listen to that. Part 3 of this interrelated trilogy on Captain Beefheart will be out in a couple of weeks. Now for the rest of you, let's have a little listen to what will be, I am sure, the strangest record ever to become a main episode of this podcast.
and learn all about Captain Beefheart's shoes. Fandom has, since the concept was coined, been very contentious.
My understanding, which I've not so far been able to confirm in any standard reference texts, so I might be very wrong here, is that the word fandom itself was coined in the 1930s and originally referred to a specific subculture, the group of fans of science fiction magazines who went to conventions like Worldcon. But almost from the beginning, even in that first fandom to be given the name, they developed two very different, and often incompatible, modes of being a fan. And those two modes are, broadly, gendered. Note here that I'm not saying that there's any intrinsic reason why these things are gendered. And I'm certainly not saying that people of one gender don't partake in the other mode of fandom.
or even that people don't move between the two modes at different times. This is a very, very broad level generalisation, and I'm not trying to say that men are from Mars and women are from Venus and anyone who looks like they're using the wrong toilet must be imprisoned, no matter how much the current government wants to impose gender essentialism on everyone.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What content warnings and publishing decisions does the host explain at the start of the episode?
0:00–19:45
2
How does the host frame fandom and the difference between curatorial and transformative fandom?
19:45–1:26:37
3
How did Frank Zappa, Herb Cohen and the Straight/Bizarre labels shape the GTOs' career?
1:26:37–1:30:24