CocoRosie member goes to "Kill Whitey" Ironic dance parties and gets called out by brainwashed.com as racist

argh, I'm trying to write something coherent about this elsewhere, but HI DERE is going to remain OTM about this, and I enjoy Jamie Stewart but his commentary on Cocorosie is absolutely moronic, on multiple levels

the beginning of that linked interview is hilarious

xp: about the only reason The Cure got away with Lol in blackface in that video with me is because I'm totally inconsistent and because the entire thing is incompetent from head to toe (also that's the video where they were calling Lol a cunt IIRC so it seemed like him being in blackface was more band inside cruelty than an overt statement on race)

I borrowed a couple of you guys' posts for this: http://chainofknives.tumblr.com/ / http://chainofknives.tumblr.com/post/722859553/op-ed-an-artists-dialogue-on-cocorosies-grey-oceans

Really? Well... "Jesus Loves Me", I don't know if you recognize it, but it's a children's song, and it's really popular. I don't know if it's really popular in Canada as well. Anyway, kids learn it really early, and it's really stripping down Christianity to its most basic, to a child's perspective. There's such a large population of African-Americans for whom Christianity is a huge thing, but Christianity still remains to be exclusive, and is very segregated, and it's very intricately connected to an old-fashioned mentality that's still very racist. To me, it's a huge contradiction with Christ's message.

*sigh*

this person is stupid

like if anything there's some really fundamental misreading of black culture/Xtianity going on there, among other things

yeah. it is sooooooooooooo not the Christian church's fault that Christian churches are largely segregated

like if anything there's some really fundamental misreading of black culture/Xtianity going on there, among other things

not to mention a fundamental ignorance of history

Really? Well... "Jesus Loves Me", I don't know if you recognize it, but it's a Cocorosie song, and it's really popular. I don't know if it's really popular in Canada as well. Anyway, kids learn it really early, and it's really stripping down Christianity to its most basic, to a child's perspective. There's such a large population of African-Americans for whom indie rock is a huge thing, but indie rock still remains to be exclusive, and is very segregated, and it's very intricately connected to an old-fashioned mentality that's still very racist. To me, it's a huge contradiction with Cocorosie's message.

I like the country teasers but really can't listen to cocorosie

my favorite part of that is "it's really popular. I don't know if it's really popular in Canada as well."

xpost re country teasers

i also don't really get why they were mentioned on this thread

I mean I understand why someone would mention them, but they are like leagues ahead in many ways

Splendid: Yeah. What was the statement behind "Jesus Loves Me"?

Bianca Casady: You really don't know? Or you just want to hear it out of my mouth?

you are being interviewed. for a publication. do you really expect their entire readership to already have an opinion on that song?

i want to hear it out of your eyes

btw if someone comes in this thread now talking about the male nurse I'm gonna get mad

is "the male nurse" the new legal name of genesis p-orridge?

xpost re country teasers

i also don't really get why they were mentioned on this thread

Uh... really? Given the turn the conversation has taken, you don't understand why someone would mention a band who released an album like The Empire Strikes Back? (which I have not heard, but based on its description and blatant lyrical cribbing from The Wall seems at least to be a more coherent, thought out exercise in satire than "Jesus Loves Me")

ah ok, never heard that one, not super familiar other than hearing them and being like "these guys are like the only decent fall rip off band"

yeah a bunch of their tracks have super racist lyrics, I'm sure there should be some quotes around the word racist or something but wtvr.

the country teasers ref was a joke really; sort of funny to imagine the people offended by the controversial parts of two gallants/coco rosie listening to them (although there's obviously a huge difference in the way they use racial issues)

I left my itunes at work open once and when I came back in the room this track was playing really loud

Pedal steel flourishes nail it squarely in a country tradition, but the lyrics are completely mad. Wallers cruises through every negative stereotype in the racist handbook, ending with a triumphant, “If I had my way/ I’d have all of you shot.”

lol :[

oh man here are a couple of awesome lines from a Pitchfork review of Two Gallants:

I want to believe that Two Gallants had good intentions in covering this song. But intention is fleeting; if it ever becomes known to the public, it's quickly dispatched to the mists of time. Only the artifact remains. And this artifact scans to me as deeply insensitive and offensive. Spin.com brushed it off as an account of racism; occasional Pitchfork contributor Jonathan Zwickel hailed it as "nothing short of revelatory" in New Times. But what value is there in an account of racism from people who've never stared down its barrel? What could it possibly reveal? If these myopic responses reveal anything, it's that the topic is much easier to gloss over than to actually discuss. Such an inflammatory project needs a complex intellectual purpose to make it more than a cheap provocation. This rigor doesn't come through in the cover, and when a Drowned in Sound interviewer pressed Stephens on the topic of "Long Summer Day", he equivocated. "I don't think it comes as something strategic," he said, and the interviewer demurred, because he was "in no mood" to really broach the topic.

full review (SPOILER: 4.8): http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8262-what-the-toll-tells/

last paragraph is also killer

lol @ staring down the barrel of racism

not so lol when you've actually done so; it does feel kind of like being in the scope of an invisible sniper rifle 24/7

i guess, i don't know, it always comes back for me to deciding who has the right to use certain words.

tbh I've never had any idea what to think of the country teasers, I do like their music a lot tho

great opening line: Nostalgic indie bands treat history like a playground, and one need not convey an understanding of the monkey bars' provenance in order to swing on them.

i guess, i don't know, it always comes back for me to deciding who has the right to use certain words.

For me, it's more a responsibility/consequences thing than anything else.

You can use whatever words you want however you want to use them; you should also be ready for whatever reaction will come back your way, intended or not, and make sure you can explain why you chose to communicate the way you did if someone takes your words in a manner you don't intend. In this case, CocoRosie recorded a song they wanted to be taken a particular way, but didn't use enough care in crafting their message to support their intent (IMO). Therefore, they are evoking an unintended reaction in me where I want them to die in a fire and their explanation, which is incoherent in its construction and very light on an understanding of the situation they wanted to criticize, does not assuage or mollify that reaction in me.

careful, plax, about confusing rights with reactions. people have the right to use all sorts of words. other people have the right to figure they used them badly or stupidly.

ha, xpost

did we switch bodies today or something

what if nabisco and Hi Dere switched bodies with the cocorosie sisters?

okay, but that doesnt happen with EVERY word, the same would go with like, I dunno faggot or something. A certain position in society gives you a right to use it in a way that will demand less justification for using it.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing btw, I think its good. I mean I think the partic. context I bring to the word faggot, is in a way a type of justification and I wouldnt feel comfortable with somebody who doesnt bring that automatic context using that word without establishing, implicitly or not, how and why they are using it, y'know?

besides being a plot for a potentially horrible indie version of a Wayans-esque comedy

i dunno, i think those rights and those reactions are kind of bound up somehow

I mean, this is kind of cheap, but I think it's telling:

In the States, we've had very few, but some occasions, where people have gotten confused by the message, and wonder if we were being offensive, and maybe if we were ourselves racist, which was really shocking. There was one gig we had where we weren't allowed to sing that song. ... It was shocking to us.

She is shocked -- SHOCKED, I tell you -- that if you use a racial slur a dozen or so times in a song, some people might wonder if you're being offensive and/or racist. That is the absolute LAST reaction they would ever have expected to come from repeated use of a racial slur. They were straight-up FLABBERGASTED that a venue might prefer them not to repeatedly deploy a racial slur in a performance. I mean, who would EVER think, while putting a racial slur in your song lyrics, that anyone would react that way? It is shocking.

^^ I say this not to be a snarky jerk, but like ... wow, if that outcome is honestly shocking to you, can we agree that you do not have nearly enough awareness of American race issues to address them in quite this way? Maybe that's just me.

I don't think we are disagreeing here plax, rather describing the same/similar phenomena in different ways.

I completely agree with you re: the context of slurs, which is the main reason why I think "Jesus Loves You" is a painful failure that actually upset me when I listened to it.

xp: lol nabisco, rest assured that it is not just you

yeah that line is definitely "thou doth protest o'ermuch" material

altho it makes me wonder who physically stopped them from singing that song (a black security guard?)

xp

"where people have gotten confused by the message, and wonder if we were being offensive" = poorly crafted message

man indie bands who say how much better Europe "gets" them really annoy me, too

I have a whole rant about this but as usual must be plied with drink to unleash it

well i saw these guys play in belgium and they really did have a massive following and the atmosphere was insanely volatile btw. My ex was way into them at the time.

CocoRosie - Big In Belgium (Aug 2011)

the atmosphere was insanely volatile

again, what??? so hard to understand, given what i've just listened to. kudos if it was a cool experience tho!

yeah i know, im not even pretending to understand it but they did put on a really elaborate and atmospheric show, and they were having a real or staged fight i wasn't sure, and the crowd were like really involved in the drama of it, and shouting things out. It was actually really, uh, intense. I agree that you would never think that from hearing their records.

(well, as J. Stewart's idiotic comment suggests, the line running from race stuff to reasons other artists might admire them is that it's all messy, volatile, difficult, weird, and intense. at least sometimes. it's natural that other musicians might admire that and a lot of listeners would be repelled by it.)

i don't own and haven't to my knowledge heard The Empire Strikes Back, but man i love the country teasers. that would suck if Waller is a racist. and tbh it sucks that even if he isn't, he's decided to play so fast and loose with his lyrics.

from what i've read i'd say he's not; he's just a huge and decidedly unprejudiced misanthrope.

generally the country teasers use of racist/sexist/prejudiced language seems to me to be half an attempt to provoke and half an attempt to examine how ridiculous those views are by examining them in a really up close and unforgiving way; and very often that means he speaks in character.

^^^ Not having heard the album, this is how all of the discourse surrounding it comes across, which is decidedly different than discourse around "Jesus Loves Me".

yes; you have to deal with what they're saying head on rather than claiming 'oh i was shocked when someone was offended'.
not always comfortable, as intended, but usually interesting.