rolling #metoo thread for sexual harassment in the music industry so no one misses out when artists we don't give a fuck about like Tim Westwood and Bassnectar get caught

It seems like a lot of the sexual harassment news of the last few years has either ended up in Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs or in individual artist threads like Ryan Adams and Swans: Classic or Dud? and Warped Tour 2004 and probably many more.

I just think it would do well to have a catch-all thread just for ILM. It seems like the news stories on this topic come and go and we don't get to see the full size of the issue. We could post news here or links to older revives in individual artist threads.

If this is a bad idea, feel free to let me know.

Anyways, here's Bassnectar:

No, I Do Not Want To Interview Bassnectar.

Here's Tim Westwood:

Tim Westwood = AWESOME

good idea!

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/fifthgear/images/7/70/Tim_westwood.PNG/revision/latest/top-crop/width/360/height/450?cb=20180520153702

let's not forget that Tim Westwood is only one year younger than Theresa May (another child of the clergy) and uses a lot more grecian 2000. The real tragedy is he when got shot, the bullet didn't go right through his testicles. It all seems to have gone quiet about him and his grooming game. What an utter stain.

Whippin hard! What's my ride out music? pic.twitter.com/znI67xOcLO

— TimWestwoodTV (@TimWestwood) June 10, 2020

he's supposedly got knocking on half a million followers yet his "whipping hard" tweet gets him 11 retweets ..hmmm

the Minneapolis hip hop scene had a crazy week of blowing with all sorts of abusers getting outed

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/doomtree-prof-others-respond-after-members-of-minneapolis-hip-hop-scene-accused-of-abuse/

pretty glaring free pass still given to surviving classic rockers about this, feels like a conversation people want to postpone indefinitely

yeah the independent radio station i used to do a show for would send out emails about not playing music by the ducktails guy (for example) when sexual abuse allegations came out, but then people would still play james brown and led zeppelin all the time

does listening to someone's music = giving them a pass? asking for a friend

not necessarily but fandom tends to do that especially when it gets loud enough to shout down critical voices

Prince is a big one no one wants to touch

I still fuck with Prince, David Bowie, Motley Crue. Nugent, Zeppelin, Aerosmith to lesser extent. I don't know why this is, but some of the songs are so emotionally resonant to me that I can't divorce myself from them. I honestly haven't even looked into what Prince has done.

idk if it's a specific one thing, or just the general consensus that he was a humongous asshole, often abusive. but i'll let ums confirm

I'm sure that Prince was a terrible asshole in many facets of his life.

including the time when he was the symbol that he told the press they had to use the special font he gave them when writing about him, send them the special font in a file, then tried to sue people for using it in articles anyway.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1117-heres-every-battle-prince-waged-against-the-internet-and-the-music-industry/

The Tim Westwood thread shows that a whole lot of ILXors really did give a fuck about him.

idk if it's a specific one thing, or just the general consensus that he was a humongous asshole, often abusive. but i'll let ums confirm

― I hear that sometimes Satan wants to defund police (Neanderthal), Thursday, July 9, 2020 5:45 PM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No I mean grooming underage women

In 1990, 16-year-old Garcia met Prince backstage in Barcelona after he saw a tape of her dancing. After she graduated high school in Germany at the age of 17, Prince became her legal guardian.[14][4] Upon moving to Minneapolis, Prince and members of his team helped set her up with her own apartment. "At first, I stayed at the Sofitel, then they moved me to a nice little prairie house at the Country Suites, but I couldn't even make a cup of tea there, so they got me an apartment and rented furniture," she said.[15] At the age of 19, Prince instructed her to get on birth control thus beginning their sexual relationship.[4] After a four-year courtship, they married on February 14, 1996.[16]

After she graduated high school in Germany at the age of 17, Prince became her legal guardian.

Ted Nugent pulled this same trick.

Oh, well...that part I didn't know. fuck!

xpost

xps to Tom

he is like funk flex yes, but singular and glorious in a way only england can be
― bob zemko (bob), Monday, 14 October 2002 07:27 (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

just imagine how singular and glorious funkmaster flex could have been if he was an upper middle class white English pedo still "doing it" at 62!

Nona Gaye was 18 when they started dating (allegedly started)

A woman I know knows a lot of people from Prince world, an R&B singer told her the story that Prince was producing her debut solo album in the early 80s

She had done vox on the Lipps Inc project and other things

Anyway

Prince demanded a blow job in the studio, she refused, he walked out, end of her solo career

re: Doomtree, this is 100% shallow but my reaction to them after their set at the first Eaux Claires festival was “these people are terrible and I wish them all nothing but ill fortune”; I’m just sorry that their implosion is built on so much abuse and suffering.

I'd prefer to keep Bowie, James Brown and Prince out of this not because they're too beloved, just cause they're dead that seems like a different category of queasiness. unless someone here is a necromancer-for-cancellation? surely we already have a "separating the art from the artist?" thread already

but obv I'm not gonna make an actual effort to thread-police

I hear that Gesualdo guy was an asshole.

and yet he's still being played every hour, on the hour, on classic rock radio, sickening

'Moro, lasso, al mio duolo' is an undeniable jam, though.

Do these kids walking about with his face on their t-shirts even know though?

https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.786988743.1102/ra,unisex_tshirt,x1860,101010:01c5ca27c6,front-c,336,366,600,600-bg,f8f8f8.jpg

Part of it is living in the middle of Minneapolis' Prince Industrial Complex and the endless hagiography gets old

Gesualdo is obviously cancelled in my book

didn't actually know any of the bad Prince stories, surprised i didn't see anyone make a lot of noise about them when he died

we all know rock n roll was partly built on this but it would be nice if we didn’t have to wait for the people to die, then wait for the mourning to die down, before any kind of minor reckoning with them. even nicer if it was their peers calling them out but that’s not happening & who else wants to deal with the threats

obv this is still going on in every genre/industry & statistically some of the ppl I like now are going to be creeps. which is shit but I’d rather know about it. lot more stuff is surely coming out soon, whether it will change anything idk. kids still love certain soundcloud dudes we knew about already. I hope they grow out of it

Worth noting that Rodney P and Ty (R.I.P) relentlessly told us of Tim Westwood’s predatory nature...no one listened. #SurvivingTimWestwood pic.twitter.com/FWGxLABWMQ

— Michael Morgan (@mikewhoatv) June 22, 2020

I'd been wondering how Westwood managed to stay so protected - from the viewpoint of 2020 it feels weird to think of the extent to which he was the biggest and pretty much only gatekeeper for any British MC (and the only person playing most rap music in the UK full stop). We're talking about a 20-30 year period of dominance here.

The even grimmer conclusion is that because he was primarily targeting young black girls, no one really cared.

I'm surprised there isn't more concerted anger directed against him from some of the bigger grime stars (unless I've missed it) because he needs dragging down, what he gets away with is outrageous.

mind you as a much as a joke character as he he seems, he still obv wields a lot of power and influence

seeming like a joke character seems to help many people who wield a lot of power & influence

Prime Ministers, for instance.

The Prince stories, while unsurprising, are really bumming me out.

yeah it's depressing
I did watch Purple Rain for the first time in probably 20 years on Netflix and that whole movie is a real grab bag of red flags though, yikes I was kinda shocked at how horrible The Kid came off

to your Doomtree post, I think those guys (except Dessa, I think she was in a different lane) were super hard drug abusers

I always felt like The Kid was supposed to look half horrible and not a model for behavior recommended by prince

but purple rain aside, djp otm. He was one of the few figures i would call a personal hero

its hard to process when a huge part, maybe the hugest part, of an artist's project is how sexuality fits into the universe they constructed

Yeah, my reading of Purple Rain was that The Kid was well on his way to becoming a piece of shit in the same vein as his father but music and Appolonia opened his eyes to his mistakes and gave him the strength to set his feet on a different path.

Also I don't mean to keep harping on this in the context of this thread but the Doomtree set was SO BAD, like half a step removed from Edina-Christian-youth-group-rapping-for-Jesus levels of bad

its hard to process when a huge part, maybe the hugest part, of an artist's project is how sexuality fits into the universe they constructed

I wouldn't say it's hard, rather that my take on it was that he was projecting a stage persona most of the time and I hoped/assumed he turned it off when it wasn't appropriate (which is of course naive when actually considered but still).

i'm starting to think that being a sexual predator / sexual power dynamics are like the quiet part of what being a successful pop star is or has always been about - the open secret. some people really seemed to relish it / some people were reluctant participants but obviously that doesn't change the end result - the pain of countless women (and queers) who suffered abuse.

'pop star' but also music industry exec etc.

this is a little out-of-bounds of this thread but i have my theories about why sexual abuse is so commonly done by people in these positions of power. part of it is the alienation of being an industrial exploiter in an exploitative capitalist framework - that very easily translates into sexual exploitation.

“The journey of this album was to recalibrate my life, coming from how to deal with these allegations and these impossible challenges and make something beautiful from it.”

jfc

what a dork

Way worse than that imo. Predator who has learned nothing. Dorks should be harmless.

I saw Jon Auer the other day and I couldn't help be reminded of the stink that being associated with KStringfellow for so long, probably well-aware of his shittiness.

wiki delivers:

Auer is three times divorced.

(apologies to any 3x divorced ilx posters)

Some quality internetting right here.

Jam band-adjacent* synthpop act Doom Flamingo is going on indefinite hiatus after lead singer Kanika Moore revealed that their saxophone player, Mike Quinn, had been sexually harassing her. She's made and deleted some posts (including text message screenshots) on social media, but they are a really small band, so there's not much press about this.

https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/doom-flamingo-announces-indefinite-break/

I really liked them. This is not Kanika's only project though (she guested at Bill Kreutzmann's Mahalo Dead concert in Hawaii a few weeks ago, among other things), so I hope we'll hear more from her at least.

Here is a Quinn-less semi-acoustic set that was released online last week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bn5aa6HG10

*(they are an Umphrey's McGee spin-off, but the Umphrey's guy only sits in with them on occasion).

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jay-z-accused-rape-13-year-old-diddy-sean-combs-lawsuit_n_67562e4ae4b0015618ddfb86?vkn

shocked!

From Bassnectar to the Boardroom

a very strange statement

pic.twitter.com/jl8sgOllCM

— Roc Nation (@RocNation) December 9, 2024

Strong 00's internet methinks m'lady vibes to the writing style there.

"young man" is a stretch

In 2023, Buzbee and Washington Ho started a line of THC-infused seltzers named HoBuzz.

ONE RED PENNY!!!

why does that read like a sentiment drafted by an aggressive lawyer that was then reworded by someone trying to sound that way

FWIW, Buzbee is/was a Trumpy superlawyer with political aspirations (lost a mayoral bid in Houston in 2019 & a city council bid last year) who has turned to celebrity sexual harassment cases after spearheading a successful suit against NFL Quarterback Deshaun Watson.

Was that drafted by Chris Eubank?

Just the expert we needed! From a friend elsewhere:

On the comment thread of an acquaintance's post, Ken Stringfellow defended Neil Gaiman. It was basically a "he's innocent until proven guilty" comment, but I feel all icky just having read it.

There was an incident in the Gaiman story (UTI) that was almost exactly the same as one in the Stringfellow story.

swans, led zepellin, bowie, rhcp (kiedis), xxxtentacion

jay z

is this a listicle?

Were there UTIs in all of these cases?

I mean I’m not surprised — p easy to get one if someone is forcing you to have sex.

Tony Buzbee exits Diddy Case Because Lawyering Is Hard & Shit...

https://www.chron.com/news/article/tony-buzbee-diddy-case-20227614.php

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/smokey-robinson-sued-for-50-million-sexual-assault-battery-1236388996
😢

ty

Jesus I had not heard about this but the unfortunate band name sweepstakes has found its winner
Yikes

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/more-victims-found-in-child-porn-investigation-against-popular-rock-band-drummer/

oof

yikes is right wtf

Yeah, I saw the news when it came out but JFC, this is getting a lot worse.

I imagine the NP will change their name, but this guy wasn't even an original member, he's a latecomer that joined long after their first three (and hands down their best IMHO) albums. Regardless, ruining the band's name is the least of his crimes.

(Or to clarify, the NP needing to change their name is nothing compared to what he did to ruin it.)

Uh I doubt those folks play together again

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/13/michael-tait-sexual-assault-allegations

his conduct was basically an open secret in the nashville ccm scene. horrific

holy fuck
horrific is right

terrible. i first encountered Newsboys in a Fleabag motel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where rooms were $40 a night, or $50 if you wanted the remote for the TV. A few doors down from us, some folks were smoking tweak and downing Buds, blasting Newsboys while singing along full-throated. I had to look up the song (it was “We Believe”) because they legit kept hitting the repeat button…. all night….

Was it the actual Newsboys in the motel room?

Just some Newsies

Remaining members of both bands can start The Newsboys Pornographers

so stupid i had to laugh

lmao

Fat Joe

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/fat-joe-sued-former-hypeman-t-a-dixon-1236436310/

Sean Combs

NOT GUILTY of racketeering conspiracy
NOT GUILTY of the sex trafficking of Casandra Ventura
NOT GUILTY of the sex trafficking of “Jane”
GUILTY of the transportation to engage in prostitution, related to Casandra Ventura
GUILTY of the transportation to engage in prostitution, related to “Jane”

His "supporters" seem pretty happy about that. He could still face 20 years inside but that seems unlikely to me.

And he’ll be pardoned by Trump

transportation to engage in prostitution

I'm not a lawyer, but this seems like at least the layman's definition of literal sex trafficking.

I was on the jury for a sex trafficking case a couple years ago and I remember being pretty astonished by the difference between all the evil shit this guy did and what parts of it specifically were illegal...our guilty verdict hung on the fact that he drove one of the women between state lines. not to imply at all of course that this was a technicality, this guy was a straight up monster

michael franti grooming young performers

https://www.instagram.com/p/DNN1u7Dssww/

That's fucked up and a half.