To what degree will you support musicians who (openly, possibly or jokingly) include racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted messages in their music, or who privately hold such beliefs?

I tend to disagree with Alfred re: the importance of authorial intent and don't treat songs as just "fictions" but he's OTM here - for me the noxious beliefs have to be in the music, and usually they are to some degree. That's why Death Certificate is about the most problematic masterpiece I own, because Ice Cube's voice is so belligerent and certain that there's no ducking or glossing over the lines you don't like. Bot not only is it a great record - it leads you to ask useful questions and dig into why he thinks what he does. The Death Certificate chapter in Jeff Chang's book is fascinating on how these ideas evolved and a reminder that "good" beliefs (anti-racism) and "bad" ones (homophobia) can coexist. At the age I first heard Death Certificate these were important ideas to grapple with - it's a great record because it's problematic, not in spite of it. The reason I want to skip certain tracks is a visceral reaction more than a principled one.

Fortunately Skrewdriver are terrible so we need not listen to them. How can you know what someone's beliefs are in private? I'm sure lots of racists listen to innocuous religious or orchestral music.

I take the lazy route, I judge by the number of idiots in the audience.

"Welcome back to Chipping and Sodbury
You can have another chance
It must all seem like second nature
Chopping down the people where they stand
According to the latest score
Mr. Enoch Powell is a falling star"

I cannot understand how anyone could read these lines as "John Cale approves of Enoch Powell" - he's describing people who are very, very clearly not avant garde welsh musicians

Uh, deliberately or not, you missed out the next two lines:

"So in future please bear in mind
Don't see clear don't see far"

... which suggests to me the narrator of the song does indeed approve of Enoch Powell. Whether you see John Cale and the song's narrator as one in the same is a different matter, obv. it's more comfortable for us nice liberal people to believe they aren't.

How do those lines indicate the narrators approval?

"So in the future, don't see, don't see far"

... that's obv. a reference to Enoch Powell "prophetic" 1968 "rivers of blood" speech

Not trying to be a troublemaker or a troll, just trying to parse this out, because the lyrics seem pretty dense to me, but those words don't appear to be in that speech?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html

They don't appear in the speech, but Powell's whole thing was being an (almost biblical) prophet foretelling of racial dischord, the man who dares to speak the truth, seeing clear and seeing far. So, in this part of the song anyway, the narrator seems to me to be a follower of Powell, dismayed at his political decline

Here's an interesting question : do you find songs about racism inspiring, or would you prefer to consume something more positive?

Fits with the bit about the "C of E looking down on you and me". Lyric is all over the place anyway, it's John Cale after all. (xp)

Hmmmm...the only google result for "Enoch Powell" and see clear see far are the lyrics for the song. But to just accept what you're saying as fact (because obvs British nationalist history isn't my strong suit), it seems to me that Cale is saying "don't see clear, don't see far" - don't do the things that Powell has been advocating.

Why would you tell somebody not to see clear and far except in a bitter tone of "because the unthinking mob will punish you for it"?

... don't see clear, don't see far because it won't get you anywhere... a prophet without honour in his own land... isn't that obvious?

Exactly

When you are trying to tell somebody not to do those things because those things are what Enoch Powell has been advocating?

... getting even more biblical.. Enoch would certainly have approved

But I don't really care about John Cale or Enoch Powell, so I'll just step on out of this having offered my subjective interpretation.

It's possible that you have to know a bit about the cult around Powell, the great Lost Prophet of post-war Conservatism (and English Nationalism), to recognise this echo in the lyric. But it seems fairly explicit to me - in the context of those lines.

Fair enough.

I would read it as Tom D and NV have done as well. I would assume the protagonist was sympathetic to Powell.As Tom said however that's not the same as Cale being sympathetic.

But well done to Johnny for writing a song about Little England attitudes, calling it "Graham Greene", for no apparent reason, and delivering it in a kind of Welsh Jamaican dialect

I wonder about Greene as a putative narrator of the song, or as the observer behind the narrator, depressed and bored by an England he's turned his back on.

Enoch Powell and John Cale....sounds like party time to me!

attacking disco, or other rhythm based music, for being brainless, tuneless, cynical or whatever has nothing to do with racism and cannot possibly by seen as racism unless said attack explicitely says that "I hate nigger music because I hate niggers" or something like that.

The amount of special pleading and question begging going on here is simply staggering.

I hate niggeir music

on this thread & on others, can people stop proving the oft-made point that typing racist epithets or punning variants of same is still creepy & NAGL in the extreme even if you're being "funny"?

yeah i almost immediately regretted making that pun

I hate nagl music

I always interpreted those lyrics as part of the next passage:

So in future please bear in mind
Don't see clear don't see far
When the average social director
Mistook a passenger for the conductor
So shocking see the old church of e
Looking down on you and me

which is all about seeing/looking

Eh?

When the average social director
Mistook a passenger for the conductor

No idea what this means tbh. Last two lines are exactly what you'd expect the narrator of the song to think of the C of E.

That would have to be some delicious racist pizza!

― Philip Nunez, Monday, 21 March 2011 22:05 (Yesterday)

can I just point out that lol

I wanted to say something on this thread but somehow it became all kinds of off-putting.

w/ cale I just think you have to give him the benefit of the doubt - the 'racist' interpretation requires a very selective not entirely obvious reading. I mean unless he's actually said conservative things that I haven't heard.. this is the same guy who released 'dr. mudd' years later - song is clearly far-left imo!

Has it been mentioned itt yet that Cale is a huge goon?

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006/12/okay-as-were-trawling-music-mags-how.html

(I mean, that was four years ago, maybe things have changed...)

the 'racist' interpretation requires a very selective not entirely obvious reading

It is pretty obvious if you're British and certainly would have been in 1973! Cale's done his fair share of liberal-baiting in his time.

a) attacking disco, or other rhythm based music, for being brainless, tuneless, cynical or whatever has nothing to do with racism and cannot possibly by seen as racism unless said attack explicitely says that "I hate nigger music because I hate niggers" or something like that.

did you ever take a sociology class and learn how institutionalized racism works, because you sound like a 15 year old libertarian kid right now

yeah I remember he was going on about Snoop etc all the time when he had one of his intermittent flutters of press attention a few yrs back

xps

but snoop was the name of his beagle, etc..

Whiney I think you missed the NRO memo:

NRO's The Corner: Rolling Bile, Spit, and Gnash Thread

If I find out someone – even someone I like – has said some ignorant shit, it kind of ruins them for me forever, unless they make some big to-do about recanting (I can't think of any examples of anyone who has made a big fussy apology though).

― Looking Man (Abbbottt), Monday, March 21, 2011 10:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

The only big fussy apology I can think of is Adam Horovitz': "I would like to... formally apologize to the entire gay and lesbian community for the shitty and ignorant things we said on our first record. There are no excuses. But time has healed our stupidity.... We have learned and sincerely changed since the '80s.... We hope that you'll accept this long overdue apology."

re: cale that looks like a fairly obvious reading to me too, tho' the narrator =/= cale get-out is clearer with him than most - he writes in character lots, certainly on P 1919. Isn't Half Past France a Nazi Soldier point-of-view song?

"a) attacking disco, or other rhythm based music, for being brainless, tuneless, cynical or whatever has nothing to do with racism and cannot possibly by seen as racism unless said attack explicitely says that "I hate nigger music because I hate niggers" or something like that."

did you ever take a sociology class and learn how institutionalized racism works, because you sound like a 15 year old libertarian kid right now

― maher shalal smash paz (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, March 22, 2011 10:10 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is fucking jive crap. Who'se worse, the 15 year old libertarian or the college freshman dorm philosipher majoring in "sociology". Tough call.

xpost I almost feel bad for setting off the whole Cale derail but I'm glad that it's not just me who thinks that narrative POV is open to interpretation. Liberal-baiting + general 70s weirdness irt racial politics means it's not impossible for Cale to have had some sympathy with Powell's fall without actually being a racist (which Cale obv isn't).

I was thinking about this the other day - I listened to Tyler the Creator's "Bastard" for the first time (hadn't heard any Odd Future stuff, wanted to see what the hype is about) and felt really kind of sad and taken aback at all the "faggot" lines in particular. I can chalk up a lot of other untoward lyrics to poetic license and storytelling and bravado and jokes, but using the word "faggot" feels much more serious disappointing to me.

But I love Death Certificate despite it's problems, as well as other older hip-hop stuff as I don't keep up with current music to anywhere near the degree that I know and love stuff from 15 years ago.

I think a lot of it is my expectations that young people from a huge city in 2011 should be past this kind of thing by now. For some reason I could understand it 20 years ago but I feel like the acceptance of homosexuality has changed so dramatically that to unironically use the word faggot now is beyond what I'm willing to tolerate in what I listen to.

"Who'se worse, the 15 year old libertarian or the college freshman dorm philosipher majoring in "sociology"."

The 15 year old libertarian. The college freshman dorm philosopher will eventually grow up.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0viO-Dm52sM/RwkAgdrtMUI/AAAAAAAADM8/WPcm4ePT9mk/s320/cale_nico_by_billy_name_02blog+left.jpg

John Cale (left) and Nico, sharing a racist joke

lol

Nico on the other hand...