In Minute 49 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny look at the dreamlike gauntlet of gay slurs and slurs for androgyny that Jack must walk by in the hotel restaurant, the trope of the gay waiter or maitre d’ and the gay sailor or matelot, the awesomely camp tableau of Jack receiving a rose from a clubgoer in a sailor outfit, the blurring and polymorphousness of identity inherent in Velvet Goldmine’s poststructural and queer aesthetic, Mandy’s relationship to Jack and the specter of Mandy being way more into Jack than he is into her, the legacy of the sometimes strained relationship between straight women and gay men, the difference between the Sombrero Club in reality’s gay clientele and the more bisexual clientele of the movie, Jack’s status as a true original and Brian’s sudden metamorphosis into a predatory figure, and we spend a very long time giving all hosannas to the arch, sexy, weird, delightful legacy of Jarvis Cocker and Pulp.

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In Minute 48 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny focus on Jack Fairy and his absolute dominance of the scene at the Sombrero, but also take side-treks down imagining Jack’s time in London in the Swinging Sixties, talking about Jack’s wardrobe, accessories, and self bridging both the highbrow and gutter, and Jack’s visual and thematic similarities to Quentin Crisp.

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In Minute 47 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny talk about the early years of funk thanks to the appearance of The Mighty Hannibal on the soundtrack, how funk and go-go music fed into the coming wave of disco in the late ‘70s, the dress code at the Sombrero Club’s party and how white and silver also prefigure the coming space/glam age, Jenny’s love of a glam Christmas, how the party is reminiscent of Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966, the Rothschild Surrealist Ball in 1972, and the Goblin King’s Ball in 1986, the gauzy filter that’s used for Mandy’s flashbacks, and Jack Fairy’s epic entrance into the party and how there is an equivalence between Brian trying to meet Mandy and trying to meet Jack.

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In Minute 46 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny talk about the many guises of David Bowie and how other artists have succeeded or failed in that kind of compulsive reinvention, our flashback to New Year’s Eve 1969 and the exterior of the Sombrero Club, Brian’s late hippie look and the secret origin of Mandy’s afghan coat, David and Angie’s swapping clothes and looks, the ten-shilling cover charge at the Sombrero and Mike’s nerding out about the decimalization of British currency in 1971, the post-Christmas interior of the Sombrero and the legacy of its lighted dance floor, the fin-de-décennie aesthetic of this scene and its analogue in the fin-de-siècle aesthetic of Oscar Wilde’s era, when decades actually begin and end, and a lot of cheeky banter about Mike’s freakishly-large head.

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Minute 41: The August Gentlemen

Minute 42: The Topsy-Turvy World of Heavy Rock

Minute 43: Birmingham Is A Code Word For Space

Minute 44: The Divine Miss Mandy

Minute 45: Left Bereft

In Minute 45 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike talk about Mandy’s reaction to Brian’s staged assassination, his prolonged absence from the pop culture scene and how it jibes with Jenny’s “there is no Brian Slade” theory, we take a look at the differing careers of Christian Bale and Toni Collette and examine what this has to tell us about institutionalized sexism in Hollywood, and how the legacy of glam differs in our 1984 and Velvet Goldmine’s 1984.

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In Minute 44 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike begin their out and proud praise of Angie Bowie, beginning with our goodbye to Cecil, our hello to the 1984 Mandy Slade, an examination of what kind of pub would have Mandy on nightly, how Angie Bowie got stiffed out of her own career during the split with David, Angie’s influence on the transgressive visual impact of glam, Angie’s ownership of the Daredevil/Black Widow Marvel properties in the late ‘70s, what Angie’s been up to since then (including a surreal sojourn on Celebrity Big Brother), Mandy Slade’s quiet noble dignity in the face of glam’s downfall, and Brian Slade, psychic vampire.

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In Minute 43 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike examine the pub where Cecil’s downfall begins, the beginning of the glam era, the importance of the “schoolgirl” audience to glam and the trope of the deprecation of the schoolgirl music fan in The Who’s Tommy and elsewhere, the mystery of where the Venus in Furs and Brian went to during their downfall and not talking to Cecil, and Cecil’s luxuriating in his misery and the gossip of long-gone days.

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In Minute 42 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike look at rock and roll managers’ requirement to be slightly physically intimidating, our first listen to the song “The Whole Shebang,” and one of Mike’s favorite bands from the ‘90s, Grant Lee Buffalo, the possibility of the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack bands being victims of a Velvet Goldmine Curse, the history of Top of the Pops in British culture, its roots in pop music on pirate and continental radio, and its role in burnishing David Bowie’s legend, TotP’s American equivalents in American Top 40, American Bandstand, and Soul Train, and other scandalous TotP performances.

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In Minute 41 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike try to unpack the meaning of Brian’s surreal meeting with nine rather sinister-looking men with sojourns into the U.S. Supreme Court, Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, and Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video, look at the beginning of Jerry’s tenure as Brian’s manager, poor Cecil and his utter humiliation in front of Brian, Mandy, and the Money Men, Eddie Izzard’s channeling of David Bowie’s manager Tony Defries, Defries’s use of empty hype to make Bowie a star, the well-worn trope of the Faustian bargain in rock, the stereotype of the Jewish theatrical agent and its intersections with the British class system, and the mysterious identity of the hangers-on surrounding Cecil during his Gethsemane-like betrayal.

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Every week, The Whole Shebang will collect and present Amazon links to the movies, music, and books we've talked about in each episode. Buy these or other Amazon items through these links to help support the podcast!

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Minute 36: The Elephant In The Room

 Minute 37: Nature Is Their Chill-Out Room

Minute 38: I Wish I Had Said That

Minute 39: Lady Tongue Controller

Minute 40: What Would Ludwig Van Say?

In Minute 40 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny finish up the video for “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon” and look at the “home invasion chic” of the Maxwell Demon character invading white plastic suburban life, echoes of this scene in both A Clockwork Orange and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the symbolism of Brian’s extra-long cigarette holder, and the American glam-horror spinoffs of KISS and Alice Cooper.

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In Minute 39 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny continue their trip through the music video for “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon,” this time taking a closer look at the Bowie-reference-laden lyrics to the song and Bowie’s taking inspiration from William S. Burroughs in using the “cut-up technique” in his lyrics and performances, the interplay of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in the persons of haughty fop Brian Slade and the serpentine Maxwell Demon, the origins of the blue reptile in the work of both Lindsay Kemp and Leigh Bowery, the legacy of the Club Kids, and Bowie’s tenuous connections to stage magic and illusion.

Find us on the web at thewholeshebangpodcast.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon at wholeshebangpod.