Censorship and Dire Straights

Who gets to decide what is offensive?

I recently saw Monty Python's AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, which has the Terry Gilliam animated bit about two cancer spots falling in love, and moving into a house, which prompts the neighbours to say "Did you see the colour of the ones who just moved in next door?  Yes; black as the Ace of Spades!  Well, there goes the neighbourhood!"

If someone of African origin saw that, and objected to it's broadcast on similar grounds to the Dire Straits song, is it a valid claim of racism.  Granted, it's Monty Python, the absolute kings of satire, but...!

Pet peeve (I have a whole menagerie): if we are discussing the use of the word "faggot" let's use the word... no need to type in the asterisks. It is not being applied as a label to anyone and yes it's use is disgusting -- but if we are going to have to delve into the muck, let's not get all prissy about it. I find the avoidance of the word itself by using f****t actually more annoying than seeing the word itself. My 2 cents anyway.

Don't forget "Bomb the Boats" by the Forgotten Rebels, and "Fuck Off" by Wayne County and the Electric Chairs.

Hmm, my guess is that Corus Radio Corp. wouldn't have played those anyway.

That reminds me, back in my pre-current progam days, I played Rachbottomoff by The Pansy Division, as well as Patti Smith's "Rock and Roll N*****."

Isn't a 'fag' British slang for a cigarette?

Yes but not faggot. Fag in British slang can mean either a cig or someone's whose gay. 

Nope; I avoid the Kleenex, and rarely read it.

I had more tunes, but ran out of time.  I did play the really bad ones, as I'd have trouble finding an excuse to play them in any other context.

I listened to "Rainbow Radio" for a while, waiting to hear their take on the decision, but they noodled around talking about other things so I shut off the radio.

never mind the potty talk, no one has ever questioned how appropriate Down By The River or Hey Joe are for the airwaves.

Nice playing. Vile fucking songs IMO. There are a mere handful of songs I can't stand to hear, and those two are on the list.

Those protectors of all things holy and good are slouching on the job.  There's some purdy nasty paralanguage goin' on out on the airwaves.

Donna Summer

Serge Gainsbourg et Jane Birkin

No, she wrote it about Don McLean, I believe ...about his singing, to be specific (I think it you google it you can find out for sure).

And the only actual filthy version of Louie Louie I ever heard was The Stooges' version, I think the whole rumour was because no one else who sang it enunciated clearly.

Wow. Talk about double entendres.

I think there might be some hidden meaning in this one too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAtifCoB3I

(one of the greatest pop bands of all time, BTW)

Well, if you want to go all subtle on us...

Ethel Waters -  My Handy Man

"Sometimes he's up long before dawn,
Busy trimming the rough edges off my lawn;
Oooh, you can't get away from it! He's such a handy man!

Never has a single thing to say,
While he's working hard;
I wish that you could see the way
He handles my front yard!"

Ms. Waters' Organ Grinder Blues isn't so cheeky.

In the "Make Love, not War" department, there's Lizzie Miles' My Man O' War.

I'm not going to spoil the effect by supplying lyrics.

wassup, I invite you to check out the link in post 55. The lyrics are also available here. If you are unfamiliar with Jamaican slang, batty boy is basically synonymous with "faggot". Poison like this pretty much undercuts the possibility of my agreeing that all censorship is wrong.

You should also consider researching overt "hate rock" - a North American and European sub-genre popular with certain elements in the "white nationalist" and skinhead communities. Lyrics are available on most of the sites that link to it.

the thing is, it doesn't bother me that some people generally don't want to hear certain expletives on the radio.  A bunch of corporate radio stations that play the same 100 songs over and over do far worse things then edit content for "objectionable language"...as in they censor out a large portion of music i'd like to hear, political views that many people have, are used to shill advertising etc.  to me that's much more offensive.

They were a Canadian band from the 80's.  Got a lot of airplay from the Canadian content rules.  And they had some really good songs too.

Still have some of their songs on a cassette somewhere that I taped off the radio back in the day.

'Course, you young whippersnappers wouldn't know what a cassette is.  Back in MY day, you didn't have all these newfangled eyephones and eyepatches and whatnots that you could listen to music on.  You considered yourself lucky to have a small single speaker tape player that was only about a foot long and a few pounds in weight, and that ran off as few as 2 D batteries.  It was either that or cart around a huge ghetto blaster.

Now, now, simmer down there, I don't mean nothing from calling it a ghetto blaster.  That's what we called them back in the day.  Weren't nothing racist at all to it.  The important thing to remember is it was a larger and heavier tape player that often used to come with a radio.  And it had 2 speakers.  The fancier ones had 2 tape decks too so you could record tape to tape.  What's all these tapes I keep going on about you say?  I'm getting to that part.  The important part of the story was that these larger tape players or ghetto blasters if you will, heh, would run on as many as 6 D batteries or even more on larger versions.

Yes, darnitall, you heard me right.  That's D batteries.  Kind of like those AA batteries that seem to run the world, but way bigger.  Nowadays everything seems to run on those bitty little AA batteries, back in the day we had C's and D's and those funny little square 9 volt batteries but for some reason I don't think they had a letter, everyone used to just call them 9 volts.  At least where I grew up as a kid we sure did.

You'd have to save up a lot of dollar bills to buy one of those fancy tape players anyhow, and dollar bills were a might rare in the home where I grew up.  Yes, dagnabbit, dollar bills.  Just like the Americans.  We didn't have all this modern pocket change when I was a kid.  "Can I change this 5 for 5 singles?" you'd ask the bank teller.  Yes, bank teller.  In my day you went to the bank when it was open, which wasn't all that often, that's where the term banker's hours comes from.  Because the banks opened fairly late and closed pretty early.  Anyhow you would go to the bank when it was open and stand in a lineup by these fancy velvety rope dividers. 

Those things always reminded me of a snake for some reason.  Which is kind of funny, since I grew up in northern Alberta and we didn't have a lot of snakes up there.  Too cold in the winters or some such.  I remember my father coming home once and telling us he had seen a turtle swimming in the Clearwater River, but that's another story.