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?

does the "overlooking" theory hold up in say rap, where clean edits are generally not the ones people prefer?

racist, sexist, homophobic work can be very interesting, even just from an anthropological standpoint. If the work is well made and compellingly executed, it's worth absorbing and studying. Wilde said it best: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

subbing out books for records, same difference

i pointed that out to him when he started it and he said he wanted it to be about beliefs and not actions

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Monday, March 21, 2011 6:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah ok it's kind of wacky to me to separate one from the other when the ultimate question is "will you financially support this guy" and the two are somewhat related.

aving heard loads of people shouting ..... I fucked Mary in the ass or whatever

y'wot?

cad, i know, but he does as he pleases!

Don't know what we will learn from these blunt instrument poll choices.

it's more complicated than buy/rent/steal/pass

yr both right-- it's more complicated than this. my main point is just to offer up a few considerations re: to what degree one may be willing to invest in/support an artist whose moral/political/etc. beliefs may conflict w/ one's own. trying to stimulate discussion, basically

does the "overlooking" theory hold up in say rap, where clean edits are generally not the ones people prefer?
--Philip Nunez

The clean edits are just pulling out swear words? Not sure how that applies at all.

having heard loads of people shouting ..... I fucked Mary in the ass or whatever

AG- apparently this is an Odd Future lyric, i didn't know it was "loads of people" though-- do they shout it en masse? (and if so, do they say "WE fucked mary in the ass" as would be gramatically correct?)

financially boycotting the artist is just pissy and dishonest.

Consumer politics are condemned to be a selective game and for that reason you could consider them pointless or even hypocritical. I do, a little. Pissy and dishonest seems to be going too far if you're saying that it's pissy and dishonest not to give financial support to somebody whose politics you think are reprehensible, even tho you might enjoy aspects of their work.

racist, sexist, homophobic work can be very interesting, even just from an anthropological standpoint. If the work is well made and compellingly executed, it's worth absorbing and studying. Wilde said it best: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

subbing out books for records, same difference
--Hyper Rescue Troop (Shakey Mo Collier)

I don't think the question is are they interesting, but more given the enormous amount books, music etc in the world do you want to give money to people who you think are for lack of a better word scumbags.

Especially when there are libraries, torrents etc.

xpost I agree with Wilde but in music objectionable views aren't usually just the occasional fleeting racist or anti-semitic lyric but blunt and consistent, plus music is more visceral, so the comparison doesn't quite hold up.

In the former camp - let's call it the TS Eliot problem - the Enoch Powell reference in John Cale's Paris 1919 always makes me wince but I'm not binning the album.

having heard loads of people shouting ..... I fucked Mary in the ass or whatever

AG- apparently this is an Odd Future lyric, i didn't know it was "loads of people" though-- do they shout it en masse? (and if so, do they say "WE fucked mary in the ass" as would be gramatically correct?)

aha that explains why that thread has so many posts over the weekend. Didn't get to check it out for some reason hehe.

"The clean edits are just pulling out swear words? Not sure how that applies at all."
embedded in the cussing is most of the problematic stuff too, and you're left with a very defanged beast.

Theirs an enormous amount of writers, musicians etc in the world who could fall into the scumbag category depending how you wanna define it.

xpost to NV. I honestly can't think of anyone whose music I like who is such an irredeemable asshole that I wouldn't want to pay them for it. I can accept boycotts when applied to certain brands or countries but it's never crossed my mind to apply one to an artist. It feels too much like being one of those jerks who burnt their Dixie Chicks records in 2003.

and you're left with a very defanged beast.

which then, perhaps, would make a perfectly good house-pet! right?

do you own any RAC or NSBM or homophobic dancehall or rap?
xp to dl

Theirs an enormous amount of writers, musicians etc in the world who could fall into the scumbag category depending how you wanna define it.
--a SB-in' artist that been in the game for a minute (Noodle Vague)

Sure it's pretty subjective.

the Enoch Powell reference in John Cale's Paris 1919 always makes me wince but I'm not binning the album

why does this make you wince? pretty weird to read that song as an endorsement of Enoch Powell. Or do you shun that Elvis Costello's "Less Than Zero" too.

as far as financial compensation being the cruz of the question, um everything is free now.

Or at least anything you want to be free can be.

I wonder what's the difference between boycotting a brand and an artist? Do you feel that a brand boycott is more likely to have a reformative effect? It seems more likely that an organised boycott of an artist would have a quicker financial impact. If a brand or an artist changes the way they behave publically because of financial pressure, does it matter if this change is "sincere"?

seems more likely that an organised boycott of an artist would have a quicker financial impact. If a brand or an artist changes the way they behave publically because of financial pressure, does it matter if this change is "sincere"

anybody who does this probably isn't worth listening to as an artist

are you guys all comfortable with reducing ethics to a capitalist market mechanism y/n

"Everything is free" feels like a v. bad faith argument to me in this case. Not that I'm opening up the death of copyright argument.

re: rap as a good house-pet
but people generally don't want domesticated rap! (unless they have kids, or want to blast it at church or something)

I'd like to know how a feminist like tuomas can listen to some sexist hip hop or say the lex can listen to homophobic dancehall. Is it a bit like mordy listening to NSBM just to kinda "know your enemy" stuff?

pretty sure I've got tons of books/records by casual and not-so casual antisemites

I wonder what's the difference between boycotting a brand and an artist? Do you feel that a brand boycott is more likely to have a reformative effect? It seems more likely that an organised boycott of an artist would have a quicker financial impact. If a brand or an artist changes the way they behave publically because of financial pressure, does it matter if this change is "sincere"?
--a SB-in' artist that been in the game for a minute (Noodle Vague)

Threats to boycott only work if the artist in question gives a shit if you their stuff. Sizzla for example has been pretty vocal in the past about not caring.

pretty sure I've got tons of books/records by casual and not-so casual antisemites

yeah and to me this is a real problem and not one with an easy answer. I really amn't sure on what level I can go "gee Ezra Pound that anti-Semitic stuff was really dumb of you, still you are a great poet come here you big lug I forgive ya". I think facile justifications for our behaviour in these circumstances aren't very honest at all

I guess the other question is, uh, these restrictions only applying to people who are currently alive and working, right? Like I'm not really worried about giving renowned anti-semitic Roman writers money. But should I hold it against Penguin Classics for publishing it? Where do you draw these lines? slippery slope.

still you are a great poet come here you big lug I forgive ya

is this what buying a work amounts to? a hug and a validation? it's just a financial transaction, not an ethical endorsement.

I think the ethical question of should I give money to X should be solved by whether money changes hands, yes.

Threats to boycott only work if the artist in question gives a shit if you their stuff.

This is an argument against the efficacy of boycotting somebody, sure. There's still the question of whether you personally feel indifferent to supporting them. I'm assuming nobody here would drop some money in the bucket if the KKK Choir came a-caroling.

Shakey, I don't "shun" the Cale song, I just wince at that line, which could easily be read as an endorsement. I basically agree with you but I don't think it's outrageous to find occasional lyrics jarring, anymore than it's unusual to wince at anti-semitism in Eliot.

AG, what's RAC or NSBM? I'm not a big dancehall fan but I own plenty of rap with sentiments I don't agree with. Sometimes, like Black Korea or a rapey skit, it makes me want to skip the track, other times not.

with shakey 100%

AG, what's RAC or NSBM?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Communism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_black_metal

What the fuck does the singer have to do with the song anyway? Once it's released, it's my song now.

is this what buying a work amounts to? a hug and a validation? it's just a financial transaction, not an ethical endorsement.

what if lots of ppl buying a person's ethically questionable work, say a musician, enables that person to continue making and releasing questionable content to the public-- when, had ppl held off paying, they would "go out of business," in a sense? it may not be an ethical endorsement, but it's a bit more than just a transaction if it enables that person to continue w/ their day job.

it's just a financial transaction, not an ethical endorsement.

A financial transaction with a living artist amounts to some financial support for their work tho, however small. I think everybody here has a line over which they won't cross in terms of supporting artists - it's how we draw that line that interests me.

you could argue that a lot of offensive material has no reasonable non-offensive substitutes, but I'm finding this sort of thing less and less to be the case. for example, someone told me skrewdriver sounded just like korn

I probably find it easier to listen to music by people with objectionable beliefs where there's less of a requirement that i engage on a personal level with the lyricist. For me, Morrissey's music doesn't work in isolation - it needs me to form a bond with him that i'm simply not capable of doing because i find him a repellent individual. That's not really the case with Beenie Man or Busy Signal, even though their viewpoints are objectively far more unacceptable. I've always been deeply conflicted over dancehall, though, and would never buy albums by deeply homophobic acts or see them in concert. Fundamentally, i can't stop loving their music. It's just not possible - it's a hard-wired response. I'll dance to it but i can choose not to financially back it. The same goes for Phil Anselmo or Brigitte Bardot.

Where hip-hop is concerned, i use a complicated combination of sophistry and hypocrisy to keep things ticking over.

draw the line somewhere north of questionnaires for buskers.

which could easily be read as an endorsement

I really don't hear this at all, sorry. Not to derail this thread into Cale territory but that whole song is a very damning indictment of the chummy, bootlicking, social climbing nature of British fascism - "chopping down the people where they stand" etc. Just goes to show how much is open to interpretation I guess

xp

xpost Well no, RAC and NSBM are just shitty music. Those cases are too easy. We wouldn't even know about those bands if not for the extreme politics.

what if lots of ppl buying a person's ethically questionable work, say a musician, enables that person to continue making and releasing questionable content to the public-- when, had ppl held off paying, they would "go out of business," in a sense?

if the person's "ethically questionable" work is well made and compelling in its own right, by all means it is worthy of being supported. Wilde again.

see the problem with Skrewdriver isn't really that their racist, it's that their racism overwhelms their work to such an extent that it renders it totally shitty. Because they place their political agenda above their aesthetic one. Politics and aesthetics can be married in very effective and interesting and engaging ways. Skrewdriver, however, was not capable of this.

I can still go back and listen to old Pantera knowing that Anselmo is a fucking idiot. If I lost my Cowboys From Hell CD, I'd probably go buy a new one and not have that weigh heavily on my conscience. (But there's also the rest of the band, Dimebag, I dunno)

Gene Simmons skeeves me out wrt the way he talks about women but I have loved Kiss since I was 10 years old. Motley Crue showed soft porn at the last show I went to, I will never make the mistake of seeing them live again but I still love their first album.

I don't know where the line is. I think it changes depending on my relationship with the band/artist, whether or not I can rationalize it (and I don't say that meaning it's a good way to be, I'm just admitting it now so as not get called out on it), and whether their view affects how I relate to the music.

I don't know if I'm even saying what I mean here, sorry I'm all over the place

xp

Skrewdriver fans might disagree. It would be really lucky if it just happened that every artist with actively hateful politics made bad art.

never got round to checking it m'self but 'pre-racist Skrewdriver' has pretty solid cult status among your more recrod collectory-y/KBD type punk enthusiasts

I think it's generally agreed that later on their music reflected the quality of their political thought, but again I wouldn't know

Glitter Band >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Gary Glitter anyway

At least 10 Eric Clapton and/or Elvis Costello fans who voted. Two of the more racist musicians of the rock era.

XXX-Post At least he didn't do a cover of "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen"...

I guess I abstractly understand the impulse to not stifle art that led so many people to vote the way they did but really this just reinforces to me the difference between feeling like you have the luxury to overlook or academify beliegs that run counter to your own and feeling like you do not.

One reason why I do my best not to support people whose views I find inimical is because success implies acceptance/approval. I do not want to give racists the mistaken impression that I am okay with their beliefs by giving them money; ditto homophobes and sexists, but there I have the luxury of being able to sometimes abstract my feelings from the sentiments being expressed because I am not their target.

This is also a case where falling into a side career of classical music via performance and connections rather than formal study is awesome/troubling, because while I knew a lot of the shit discussed upthread I'd never really gotten too in depth with it; I would have had much more of a problem doing "Der Meistersaenger" had I known all of this in this detail (although I bagged out of that concert anyway for a paying gig, lol).

XXX-Post At least he didn't do a cover of "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen"...

The song involves being in bed with a girl, and waiting until midnight on the eve of her birthday, at which she becomes of legal age, and he enters her.

so.. !

Confess to being on firmer ground discussing Gary Glitter's oeuvre than Mad Richie Wagner's

I find lately that I am more susceptible to this, simply because there is so much great music that isn't problematic in the ways described in this thread, that it feels weird to feel like I *have* to listen to this band with problematic imagery/ideas.

take Destroyer666, I liked their new album a lot, and then the more I learned about KK Warslut being a misogynist, racist shitbag, I haven't felt compelled to return to it. I think though when you actually see examples of this behavior on your doorstep in everyday life and the ugliness it entails, it's harder to handwave away.

and yet obviously there is this contradiction because I still listen to hip-hop which is rife with misogyny, so it's hard to figure out where I draw the line. Yet homophobia, in hip hop (and well any genre) tends to be the thing that's non-negotiable for me now.

Even a few years ago, when I saw Dave Chappelle, there was a large part of his set due to homosexuality and transexualism. It was uncomfortable because Dave asked the audience to give it up for the gay community, and like 15% of the audience cheered while the rest of the crowd leered with deadpan stares, either because they were afraid to admit they were ok with homosexuality or because they probably actually weren't. And although Dave himself is pretty laissez-faire about the community, his bit on the transgender community was problematic because he worked in a bit for LOLs about "ok it's fine that you want to be transgender but why do *I* have to change my pronoun game for you" (uhh, because it's what that person wants and is a show of respect) and LOLing that someone who identified as a woman still had a dick and that shit was getting raucous laughter and it almost brought what had been a fun show to a halt for me before he went back into innocuous territory.

not going to front like I have a consistent means of determining what I will and won't listen to but definitely as I've aged it's been easier to stop listening to problematic voices.