Zilla Rocca once held a Backstreet Boys CD in the palm of his hand. It was directly after taking it out of the grasp of a knocked-out shoplifter. So what if it was a 13-year old girl, she was a thief.
It was revealed last week that Lou Pearlman, the “mastermind” behind the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC (last time I’ll ever be using that asterisk), was found guilty of more than just polluting the youth of the late 90s with songs rhyming “fire” with “desire” and “love” with “above.” Big Lou is ready to do an up north trip to the tune of 25 years for a decades-long scam that fleeced relatives and business investors in the hundreds of millions. Hopefully he’ll start a blog like Prodigy. Either way, Vanilla Ice suddenly didn’t seem that evil anymore…but fuck him, still.
After reading over the news story at OMG!, which apparently is run by a 12 year old white girl who loves texting, I decided to do a quick Wiki look-see at Big Lou.
Two words:
Holy
Shit
This guy makes George Bush and Isiah Thomas look like Amish farmers. First off, his cousin is Art Garfunkel—I mean the resemblance is uncanny, right? Second, he got his start in business by hanging around a German blimp tycoon named Theodor Wüllenkemper. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay should store that information for when they begin working on “Anchorman 2.” Big Lou then started a blimp advertising company that would’ve maybe worked out, except for the measly little crash of a Jordache blimp. No reports on whether or not the blimp was acid-washed.
Fat Man In A Little…Kid
This transitional period of Big Lou’s life was a true crash and burn. And how did this balding, morbidly obese phoenix rise from the ashes? He became “involved” with the Chippendale dancers. Ok—this is where Wikipedia gets kinda scary. Here’s a quote from Big Lou: “I got involved with Chippendales before Backstreet and it’s Chippendales and New Kids on the Block that gave me the idea to pursue Backstreet.” How, why, or what level of involvement actually that means, no straight man should ever know like the ending of “Fried Green Tomatoes.”
He then took his fake aircraft leasing business Trans Continental Traveling Services, home of penny stock swindlers and pump-and-dump schemes, and turned it into a label, Trans Continental Records. The label signed the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Backstreet, Nsync, LFO, and O-Town. If that wasn’t enough, he signed Aaron Carter, Jordan Knight, C-Note, and Smilez & Southstar. *
In short, this Lou Pearlman is responsible for 72% of all returned CDs in US history while setting balding, sweat-caked white millionaires back 35 years.
To run a talent scouting company in 2002, Lou hired a man named Ayman Ahmed El-Difrawi “who had a criminal record, spent nearly four years in prison for fraud, and is banned from doing business in Illinois” probably for buying White Sox season tickets. To Lou, he wasn’t a felon—he was “just the computer guy.” This PC dude left the agency in 2003 along with some credit card numbers of unsigned talent who registered and paid $200 to be on the website to host their pictures in hopes of being discovered by an A&R.
Rolling Stone: The Prostate Exam Issue
When Big Lou wasn’t discovering Orlando ’s best colostomy bags, he was pillaging investors in Ponzi schemes for millions of dollars. He was first sued for $130 mill, which turned into $317 mill, which topped out at $500 mill.Props to the Orlando Weekly for putting a foot up investigators’ asses: “”Old news, amigos. We told you three years ago that Pearlman was a corpulent pusbag who would rip off anybody and anything within reach of his scaly appendages. But did you listen? No, you did not.”
Lou Pearlman’s ten different companies, which all existed to rob and extort people, were peanuts compared to the TRL-flavored extortion sauce he fed BSB and Nsync. He not only got a cut of BSB’s profits as the manager and “producer,” he was also paid as the sixth member of the group. With his big ass, he should’ve pushed to be paid as the seventh and eight member too.
Nsync generated over $300 mill during their heyday, most of which landed in the pockets of BMG and Big Lou. Nsync took home $7 mill to split five ways, which led to this statement in Rolling Stone by Justin Timberlake: “”I was being monetarily raped by a Svengali.” That could’ve been a hook for Madonna’s new album seeing how it’s spunky, subtle, and full of potential sex-pop innuendo.
Never Forget
There have also been several claims that Big Lou was really sweet for man candy. He was alleged to have had inappropriate dealings with Rich Cronin of LFO, some 13 year old kids in the group Take 5, a cast-off from Backstreet, and Aaron Carter. Why he didn’t fondle Vanilla Ice for good measure is beyond me.
In a 2007 interview with Radar magazine, Big Lou was apparently high on crack cocaine he bought from Howie of BSB when he made the statement, “I’m planning on this chapter ending soon….This is just one of those hurdles in life that you have to get past….I mean the Backstreet Boys are about to get going again. They had a band member quit, but they’re about to stage a comeback…we are still entitled to a share of the revenue.” Maybe he forgot that Justin Timberlake wasn’t in Backstreet, but rather the douche who tried to marry Paris Hilton and sold less records than his kid brother, who had a single called “That’s How I Beat Shaq.” **
As we bid farewell to one of America ’s biggest sharters, it’s important to note that Lou Pearlman has learned the error of his ways. He just released a statement full of remorse after his conviction saying, “I’ve come to realize the harm that’s been done” as if this all was a slow revelation.
When he wasn’t crashing blimps full of jeans from the 80s, hanging around chest naked male strippers, fantasizing about New Kids on the Block, creating dummy corporations, robbing relatives/retirees/investors of their life savings, molesting Disney channel favorites, hiring felons, or introducing Joey Fatone to the American consciousness, he was eating live cattle with his bare hands.
Goodbye Louis Jay Pearlman and fuck you!
*When I used to work at Coconuts, we had to listen to shitty in-store CDs every month. Each CD had a tracklisting full of songs that labels paid to have placed. There was a good 3 month stretch when Smilez & Southstar were on these in-store CDs. I remember picking up their CD on the shelf and looking at 2 guys and thinking “Which one is Smilez?” Neither one really beamed personality. “And how does one become Southstar when you live in Orlando ?” The one guy looked like the not-so-funny black comedian Flex of “Homeboys in Outers Space” fame and the other looked like Jin of “Why isn’t Ruff Ryders returning my calls?” fame mixed with a chihuahua. Regardless, they were both better than Lil’ Wayne.
**My lone Aaron Carter memory once again comes courtesy of Coconuts in-store CDs. I forget the title of his single, but I do vividly recall one of his lyrics as “mom and dad be trippin!” That’s not much else you can say about Aaron Carter after that, but that song was still better than “A Millie.”
