alexrosas2023-01-23T19:49:14+00:00January 23rd, 2023|True Crime|
It is essential to include a story on women in jail because women are perpetually forgotten and overlooked. Ninety percent of my clients are male. This may suggest that women don't get arrested as much, but they do. By nature women are made to care, nurture, rescue and protect. Men do not take care of women the way that women take care of men, whether they be a husband, boyfriend, son, brother or friend.
alexrosas2023-01-23T20:03:58+00:00January 23rd, 2023|Music|
©2021 By Legs McNeil Originally published on: PleaseKillMe.com Miles (aka Barry Miles) had a front-row seat to the London underground scene of the 1960s, as a bookseller and gallery co-owner at a time when Beatlemania was morphing into psychedelia. He met and befriended Paul McCartney at his Indica bookstore and gallery, and from there, he met the rest of the Beatles. In this conversation with PKM, Miles recalls what now seems like a magical, mysterious era.
alexrosas2023-01-23T15:03:24+00:00December 19th, 2022|True Crime|
In honor of the CIA releasing 12,879 documents Thursday, December 16th, 2022 by the National Archives, and the 1,491 documents a year ago today-- I present my chapter 34 from my book Tomorrow Is Canceled. Chapter 34 is entitled, “Something Is About To Pop,” about the apprehension of Lee Oswald inside the Texas Theater about an hour after President Kennedy was assassinated and about a half hour after Officer Tippet was murdered in front of his police car in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.
alexrosas2022-12-19T16:37:25+00:00December 19th, 2022|True Crime|
I never dreamed of becoming a bail agent. It fell into my lap and seduced me with quick large sums of cold hard cash. What inspired me to stay was the discovery that I could really stick it to The Man! This brought me so much joy. When an innocent person minding his own damn business had a tail light out and then got shook down by some cop and a personal amount of marijuana or some other recreational drug would land you in jail, I had the magic piece of paper that could have a person out of custody within hours. The fact that I was part of an industry felt fake. Cops make arrests, there’s city and county jails, and the courts employ tons of people. It’s an industry like any other.
alexrosas2022-12-19T00:45:45+00:00December 9th, 2022|Books We Love, Literature, True Crime, TV & Film|
The first biography of the legendary and notorious actor Lawrence Tierney was published on Tuesday, December 6, by the University Press of Kentucky. Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood’s Real-Life Tough Guy, by Legsville contributor Burt Kearns, traces Tierney’s career from his overnight success in the 1945 film Dillinger, through the drunken scenes, brawls, and arrests that derailed his career, to his “rediscovery” by Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs.
alexrosas2023-01-23T16:36:31+00:00November 26th, 2022|True Crime, TV & Film, Video Of The Month|
More than sixty films. More than thirty television roles. More than seventy arrests. Lawrence Tierney was the toughest, meanest, coldest actor in Hollywood, onscreen and off. An overnight sensation in 1945 as Public Enemy #1 in the movie Dillinger, he proceeded to drink and brawl his way out of a career by the early 1950s – or so it seemed. Lawrence Tierney is the great untold story of the dark side of Hollywood – a story of alcoholism, madness and violence, but also survival, loyalty, and genius.
alexrosas2023-01-23T16:36:48+00:00November 22nd, 2022|True Crime|
A few years ago, I was driving through Dallas, Texas on my way to Los Angeles, and dropped by the Texas School Book Depository and watched in horror as hordes of tourists kept running into Elm Street to pose for selfies at the exact spot where President John F. Kennedy was shot. There was an “X” permanently marked on Elm Street so the gangs of sightseers knew exactly where to stand. Too often, when a national tragedy occurs in the United States it becomes an event or an argument, rather than the loss of human life.
alexrosas2022-11-14T01:30:45+00:00November 13th, 2022|True Crime|
Remember the line in the David Ayer film “End of Watch” about the four food groups of crime? That line resonated with me, because it’s funny and true. The drug dealer is definitely one staple of major crime food groups. I was always looking for huge drug dealer clients and drug user clients alike. What I was not looking for was a client who committed crimes against unknowing people.
alexrosas2022-10-31T17:02:21+00:00October 31st, 2022|Essays, Music|
It’s very rare that 34 years after you date someone, you get a chance to witness a documentary about what was going on in that person’s life at the time you were dating them. Remarkable, really, but I got the chance recently when Showtime premiered the documentary, “Nothing Compares,” about Sinead O’Connor by filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson.
alexrosas2022-11-01T15:44:23+00:00October 31st, 2022|Books We Love, Literature|
A LEGSVILLE ORAL HISTORY: Legs McNeil speaks with his friend Liz Hand, the acclaimed author of the Cass Neary mystery books, and whose next novel is inspired by Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and authorized by the Shirley Jackson estate.
alexrosas2022-10-27T15:41:41+00:00October 27th, 2022|True Crime|
It was a frenzied New Year’s Eve bond call with all the bells and whistles. I had just ended my night, and as my head hit the pillow, sure enough, my phone rang. I saw it was a “friend” of mine in need. The frantic girlfriend, the innocent arrestee, with the old “we don't have all the money” and the life-or-death need to get out of jail saga. The usual stuff. This New Year’s Eve bond took a very sour turn for the worst. “No good deed goes unpunished” comes to mind when I think of this story.
alexrosas2022-10-21T17:29:52+00:00October 21st, 2022|Books We Love, Literature, Music|
Lucid spoke about punk rock, politics, metaphysics, and more in this email exchange with Happiness author Zack Kopp. “To me punk and metaphysics seem to belong together,” says Tamra Lucid. “Both are rebellions against bullshit. And what is punk anyway? Punk can be for peace or violence, for racism or for equality, for noise or pop, for anarchy or for Broadway. My band has never fit any category. Sucks for algorithms, but so much fun!” Lucid Nation co-founder Ronnie Pontiac was mentored by American metaphysician Manly Palmer Hall (1901-90) at his Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles before the band started playing shows in 1994.
alexrosas2022-10-21T17:19:06+00:00October 19th, 2022|Music|
©2018 By Legs McNeil | Originally Published on PleaseKillMe.com on July 25, 2018. Legs McNeil interviews Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding at Cafe Nine just before they play a sold-out show. Robert talks about turning down Bob Dylan’s songs and Link Wray pulling a knife on Sid Vicious.
alexrosas2022-10-07T02:28:07+00:00October 5th, 2022|Essays, True Crime|
I was sitting home alone on a quiet Wednesday night when my phone rang. It was a bond call! A shot of adrenaline went straight to my brain whenever my phone rang. I answered eagerly with a million thoughts going through my head. Many people assume I had celebrity clients through nepotism. Not necessarily so… Here’s the true story of my first celebrity client.
alexrosas2022-10-21T17:19:17+00:00September 4th, 2022|True Crime|
The Legsville Bail Bondswoman, Raquel Vasquez, tells the hard lessons she’s learned in Part Two of Bail Tales: Getting Paid! "First, I learned quickly that the cops and sheriffs were contentious, but that was a known fact. My clients' adversities and dramas were much more complicated than expected. You’d think rappers who pulled up in Maybachs would have cash dusted with cocaine particles, but that wasn't the case. And not all my clients had celebrity status. Some of my clients were just hard-working white boys from the San Fernando Valley who happened to have a heroin addiction."
alexrosas2022-10-21T17:31:14+00:00September 4th, 2022|Music|
I went to a preview of David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar’s Theater of the Mind, inspired by both historical and current neurological lab research, in a warehouse in Northeast Denver last night. Official shows begin next week, but a friend of mine got me a ticket, and what follows is my review of the experience. No doubt there are things I’ve forgotten to mention, like the Scottish interlude of traffic changes so gradual they go unnoticed until the guide hits rewind, the whole production having been designed to illustrate the unreliability of the senses we go by, but not many.
alexrosas2022-08-24T18:40:12+00:00August 22nd, 2022|Music|
Volume one (of many) ©2022 By Chris Zappa As an artist, it must be stressful coming up with album titles. It’s a bit like naming a baby, if that baby’s name was a determining factor in its commercial success or lack thereof. More often than not, artists strive for interesting names, names that make you think, inspiring one to wonder what’s the story behind the title. Oftentimes however, throughout the history of modern music there have been plenty of instances where the band or artist clearly phoned it in, choosing a name so odd — in many cases, so dumb or gross — that no matter how great the songs contained therein may be, there’s no redeeming it. In no particular order, here are a few particularly stinky stinkers that really stink.
alexrosas2022-08-22T23:58:41+00:00August 22nd, 2022|Essays|
Liz Hand is one of my favorite contemporary writers, as well as being a friend. As her website (elizabethhand.com) tells it; “Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Award, among other honors, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable books.” My favorite books of Liz’s are her critically acclaimed novels featuring her fictional character, Cass Neary, a bisexual, alcoholic, speed freak, who published an acclaimed photo book in the 1970’s, but has faded into obscurity, supporting herself by authenticating photos for weirdo collectors around the world. This is where the fun begins-- as inevitably someone gets murdered-- and instead of wanting to solve the crime, Cass wants to get the fuck out of town!
alexrosas2022-08-17T18:11:53+00:00August 17th, 2022|TV & Film|
Duncan Hannah is a New York City–based artist whose paintings have been featured in over seventy solo exhibitions around the world since his debut in 1980. His work has been collected by both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Mick Jagger. Hannah has occasionally acted, and his filmography includes Amos Poe’s Unmade Beds (1976), Jennifer Montgomery’s Art for Teachers of Children (1995), and Michael Bilandic’s Hellaware (2013). Originally Published at The Criterion Collection | ©2016 By The Criterion Collection
alexrosas2022-08-14T18:19:17+00:00August 13th, 2022|Essays, True Crime|
I’m not going to lie, it was exciting for me to go to Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. I’m not sure if it’s the “high power” inmates or just nervous energy. You see, in LA ex-cons are everywhere and they’re not embarrassed to tell you about it. Having been in Men’s Central Jail can earn you a pack of sycophants for the rest of your life. So yes, I’ll admit, on my first visit to MCJ I was genuinely giddy. I was there to interview a defendant in custody. I needed to feel him out and determine whether he was worth the risk of posting his bond. All my rookie enthusiasm changed very quickly.
alexrosas2022-08-13T01:56:37+00:00August 11th, 2022|Essays|
We mourn the death of Olivia Newton-John. She was a pleasant singer and actress, an icon to a certain generation of fans who grew up with her, most after she made the transition from British-born Aussie country singer to pop star, the little girls wanting to be her, young boys wanting to be with her – and even more boys wanting to be her. Now that she’s gone, after a long and valiant battle with cancer, Olivia Newton-John is receiving well-deserved honors, but she has left this plane with a mystery that dangles and clouds her legacy. It’s a mystery partially of her own making, a question left unanswered: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PATRICK MCDERMOTT?
alexrosas2022-08-06T20:40:11+00:00August 4th, 2022|Music|
We’ve all seen that horribly facile Oliver Stone film, “The Doors” and we still watch it anyway, even though it sucks– thus is the power of Jim Morrison. He still captures our inner belligerent souls. And Val Kilmer looked and imagined Morrison they way we believed him to be. If only Val had a script to work with. One thing that really bothered me was the scene in the movie, when Jim Morrison meets Nico and she says, “Hi, want to fuck?” Or something equally ridiculous. Nico wasn’t that vulgar, uncouth or stupid. But now for millions of kids, Nico is thought of as a moronic floozy instead of the serious artist that she was. I’m getting sick of bio-pics that get it all wrong and re-write the facts, which happen to be even more fascinating than the tripe we are fed on the screen. Which brings me to “The Nod Monastery,” my corrective of what really happened the night Jim Morrison met Nico, and I think you’ll agree it’s a lot more passionate and dramatic than anything Oliver Stone could dream up.
alexrosas2022-10-21T17:20:53+00:00July 31st, 2022|Music|
©1995 and 2022 By Legs McNeil [Originally published on pleasekillme.com] Sterling Morrison (1942-1995) was the guitarist for the Velvet Underground, appearing on all four studio albums that the band made. He left the band in 1971 and moved to Texas to finish graduate school, became both a tugboat captain and a college professor. Legs McNeil interviewed him in New York in early 1995. At the time, Morrison was undergoing chemotherapy. Sadly, he did not live long enough to witness the answer to his very first comment in this interview. He died on August 30, 1995. The Velvet Underground were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the following year.
alexrosas2022-07-29T16:55:58+00:00July 29th, 2022|Music|
The book is squalid, evocative and often very, very funny — full of contradictory versions of the same story, all of which have some grain of truth — and that’s how real life is; his version, his version and the truth, which is still compromised
alexrosas2022-10-21T17:20:46+00:00July 16th, 2022|Books We Love, Literature, TV & Film|
Al Martino played crooner (and wedding singer) Johnny Fontane. It was a role that Frank Sinatra tried to rub out. Frank believed the character in Mario Puzo’s novel was based on him, but it was a role Martino knew was his. A popular Italian-American balladeer in the early 1950s, he’d been forced to move to Great Britain after he defied the mobsters who’d bought his management contract. Martino returned to America and fought his way back onto the charts and success in the 1960s.
alexrosas2022-07-16T15:16:28+00:00July 16th, 2022|Music|
I wanted to share a eulogy I wrote for my dear, dear friend Howie Pyro. We said goodbye to him today at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. There will be an NYC memorial for him July 20th and a big celebration of his life concert July 23rd at The Bowery Ballroom With D Generation , Brian Fallon , HR , Theo Kogan from The Lunachicks and many more…
alexrosas2022-07-16T15:17:45+00:00July 8th, 2022|Uncategorized|
Like mute metal newsboys on a corner, newspaper racks are the slot machines of journalism. You put your money in and take your chances that there’s news you want to peruse. Slot machines, and piggy banks. When you own a newspaper with racks you have little cash stashes all over town. Run short in the video store because the girls forgot to bring back the DVD for a week … Take some change out of the rack out front. I pay for lots of things in quarters.
alexrosas2022-07-08T16:32:42+00:00July 7th, 2022|Essays|
©2022 By Burt Kearns Joe Friday was a fictional Los Angeles police detective, created and portrayed by [...]
alexrosas2022-07-07T17:49:13+00:00July 7th, 2022|Uncategorized|
©2022 By David Hershkovits M. Henry Jones, who passed away on June 16 at the age of 65, was a [...]
alexrosas2022-07-06T17:22:39+00:00July 6th, 2022|Essays, True Crime|
THE REAL WORLD OF THE PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR ©2022 By Nils Grevillius Operating in the shadows, Counterintelligence [...]
alexrosas2022-07-02T05:25:47+00:00July 1st, 2022|Music|
alexrosas2022-07-16T15:20:36+00:00June 26th, 2022|Music|
(Or: How a Jewish Mariachi Trumpeter Turned a Chicano Rock ‘n’ Roller into an Easy Listening Pop Crooner) | Born in Los Angeles, a high school classmate and friend of Brian Wilson, rock ’n’ roll tenor and devotee of Ritchie Valens, teenage Mexican-American Ezekiel Christopher Montañez got a name change to Chris Montez and at nineteen had a Top Ten record in 1962 with Let’s Dance. Meanwhile, in another part of L.A., A Jewish singer, songwriter, and trumpeter named Herb Alpert formed a record label called A&M, and inspired by a group of mariachis at a bullfight in Tijuana, recorded a song called The Lonely Bull. The single hit the charts alongside Let’s Dance in the fall of 1962, and also made the Top Ten.
alexrosas2022-07-16T15:20:05+00:00June 23rd, 2022|Music|
In 2009, Ray Davies toured America to promote The Kinks Choral Collection, which featured new studio recordings of some of Davies’ finest songs backed by the Crouch End Festival Chorus. He performed with the chorus at Town Hall in New York in November. Six of the songs from the classic, underrated Kinks’ album Village Green Preservation Society were included in Davies’ “choral collection.” On the forty-ninth anniversary of the release of Village Green Preservation Society, we present the following exclusive interview with Davies, conducted on Nov. 11, 2009 by Legs McNeil and Stacey Asip, in which Davies talked about his family, his working class roots and the early days of being a Kink. This version is condensed from a much longer interview.
alexrosas2022-06-17T14:14:11+00:00June 17th, 2022|Essays|
Dunc had it all; the charm, the clothes, the looks, the brains, the talent, and more importantly, he was not an asshole. He didn’t need an entourage, he enjoyed going to see his friend’s work, and he enjoyed explaining why he liked something or did not like it. He was extremely accessible and his take on “the work” was inspiring. And his manner was classy, in an unpretentious way; more Mid-West down home. And his smile was infectious.
alexrosas2022-06-23T15:41:34+00:00June 15th, 2022|Music|
The Senders lead singer, talks to Legs about his memories of Johnny Thunders and the New York Dolls, Nancy Spungen, Sid Vicious, CBGB’s, Blondie, Richard Hell and more…
alexrosas2022-06-12T21:00:18+00:00June 12th, 2022|Fashion|
©2022 By Amy Haben Brooklyn’s best vintage destination is helping the environment while serving up unique looks. [...]
alexrosas2022-06-07T16:42:13+00:00June 7th, 2022|Music|
©2022 By Burt Kearns (So Elvis is alive. There’s a lot of talk about that new Baz Luhrmann [...]
alexrosas2022-06-07T04:39:15+00:00June 7th, 2022|Music|
Gene Krupa is easily one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, elevating the role of the jazz drummer from sideman to soloist to superstar. His energetic playing on Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” remains a standard-bearer 80+ years later, and The Drum Battle he recorded with Buddy Rich in 1952 is as dizzying today as it was upon release. But Krupa’s towering influence has not been confined to jazz and swing drummers. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that he was a major inspiration for some of punk rock’s most important timekeepers, including Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls and Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Rat Scabies of the Damned, and Lucky Lehrer of Circle Jerks.
alexrosas2022-06-06T18:59:27+00:00June 6th, 2022|Music|
©2022 By Chris Zappa Remembering the legendary Ramones bassist. 999 Anyone who has ever listened to [...]
alexrosas2022-06-03T15:41:59+00:00June 3rd, 2022|Music|
Ernie Brooks is a very likable fellow who was raised in New York and Connecticut by intellectual, liberal parents, which explains why he became a civil rights activist down South during the violent “Freedom Summer” of the early 1960s. Ernie’s a Harvard graduate who studied English literature, poetry, and rock 'n' roll, along with his college roommate Jerry Harrison, who later became the keyboard player for the Talking Heads. A chance encounter with Jonathan Richman led to a wild ride as one of the founding members of the legendary Modern Lovers, perhaps the greatest alt-rock, pre-punk, indie band that no one has ever seen.
alexrosas2022-06-02T21:44:48+00:00June 2nd, 2022|Books We Love, Music, True Crime|
A Special Guest: Nikolas Schreck Visits Legsville! Nikolas Schreck is a singer-songwriter, author & filmmaker who, likes Legs, did extensive research into the dark side of the 1960s.
alexrosas2022-06-01T15:12:56+00:00June 1st, 2022|Music|
The classic album made in exile takes an inevitable journey to Main Street where it remains relevant fifty years on.
alexrosas2022-06-01T14:55:21+00:00June 1st, 2022|Essays, True Crime|
This was the 144th day of 2022. There have been more mass shootings than days in the year. Let me clarify that: there have been more mass shootings in America than days in the year. This is the only country in the world that can claim that dishonorable distinction. Think about that
alexrosas2022-05-25T23:06:40+00:00May 25th, 2022|Books We Love, Music|
A Product of Legsville: A Legsville Oral History - Legs McNeil Talks with Bobby Grossman
alexrosas2022-06-02T15:31:30+00:00May 24th, 2022|Music|
Arturo Vega was the most optimistic, jubilant and fun pal anyone could wish for. If it wasn’t for Artie, Joey Ramone and I would’ve starved to death in those early days. He used to give us each a buck fifty so we could each buy a quart of beer and a pack of cigarettes. Joey smoked Winstons; I smoked Marlboros, at 75 cents a pack.
alexrosas2022-05-19T16:42:32+00:00May 19th, 2022|TV & Film|
When you think of an axe murderer what vision comes to mind? I bet it isn’t a frail, Christian mother wearing oversized glasses and a tight perm. This is why Hulu’s series, Candy, intrigues us so much. Based on the true story of Candy Montgomery (played by Jessica Biel), a suburban mom from Wylie, Texas who killed her lover’s wife by hitting her 41 times with an axe. Shockingly, Candy got away with it claiming self-defense.
