Albums you own or used to own from artists that turned out to be awful people.

the Gira story seems to have just vanished after the initial fallout, enough that I think Swans "final" tour just went off without anyone bringing it up? I even know people who went who seemed to have forgotten the whole thing.

i mean i LOVED swans. let's be clear. mostly for the early 90s awesomeness though i was certainly a fan in the 80s as well. but i listened to that stuff SO much and swans are dead tour was a great end to a cool band and it was kind of nice to move on in my own life.

though i did join jarboe's swans e-mail list a long time ago when i first got a computer. just to see what that was like.

there was definitely a palpable dip in enthusiasm for The Glowing Man (imo it was alos just not that exciting an album, which did not help). can't speak to whether the shows were more sparsely attended or not, though.

*also

the Gira story seems to have just vanished after the initial fallout, enough that I think Swans "final" tour just went off without anyone bringing it up? I even know people who went who seemed to have forgotten the whole thing.

― akm, Monday, November 13, 2017 3:47 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people worldwide stopped mentioning it because they were afraid ilxor what's his name would drop in and pester them

the guy who can't get over glenn mcdonald being a spotify employee. him.

I've been skeezed by the Who since Townshend's involvement with child pr0n was revealed.

― droit au butt (Euler), Monday, November 13, 2017 2:54 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What actually happened was this: after a close friend of Townshend's, who had been abused as a child, committed suicide, Townshend posted an essay he'd written called "A Different Bomb," to his website. This was a year before his arrest. Included in this essay was Townshend decrying the ease with which one could view child porn -- unwisely (to say the least), he used his credit card to access such a site to prove his point. He also alerted at least one UK-based child protection agency, who brushed him off (after his arrest, they loudly denounced him, then had to backtrack once it was pointed out they'd ignored him a year prior). He contemplated going to the cops, but his lawyer advised against it.

No images were found on Townshend's computers and hard drives, and he was cleared. There's no evidence that he did anything other than something really fucking stupid in order to prove a point.

the guy who can't get over glenn mcdonald being a spotify employee. him.

― harbinger of failure (Jon not Jon), Monday, November 13, 2017 12:57 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that guy is mentally ill i think

idk. i kind of think that when an artist puts their art into the world, it becomes part of the world, they have to surrender it to an extent. some of that swans music (or miles, or lennon) -- it's mine, now, you know? it has meaning to me and resonance in my life that is independent from the asshole who made it. sometimes the art's connection to the artist as a person is too stark for me to get beyond that, and certainly the artist's life as the art's creator has inherent interest and value to me, but with some art that i engage with a deeper level, i can kind of claim it as my own, it's not theirs anymore. i remember larkin grimm saying something like "i don't care if you throw out your swans records or not, art is higher than morality" and i generally agree with that even if it's not always the case.

i recognize though that it's a pretty subjective thing and a very personal decision to make whether or not to engage w/ art from a reprehensible shithead

If that Townshend story is true it’s kind of funny in a twisted way.

I think right now my stance is:

I might continue listening to the music as long as the overall shittiness of the people behind the music is not projected on its lyrics, but I’d rather not buy any album of theirs.

Many rock and pop music revolves around sex though, so unfortunately my view of the song gets ruined when I know an artist was thinking about underage girls when writing it. It feels dirty.

xpost that version of the story is pretty broadly not known, maybe more so in the USA? I routinely hear people making pedophile jokes about Townshend

I think this thread has effectively ruined 70’s classic rock music for me. Now I can only think of all these bands fucking 14 year old groupies and having a laugh about it.

xp: That version of the Townsend story is exactly how I remember it being reported when the whole thing broke.

I think where I draw the absolute line is whether or not the artist is alive. Like, I own one James Brown album, and when I bought it I knew he was a wife-beater, but at that point he was already dead, so I wasn't supporting him financially in any way. And like someone said upthread, it's not like he made songs glorifying violence towards women; I wouldn't listen to such songs even if they were made by someone who'd never hurt a soul, because why would I want to listen to something that's against my core values?

But then you have someone like Varg Vikernes; I'd never buy anything he's released, cos I'd know the money would go into supporting him and his spreading of fascist propaganda online. (Not that I listen to the kind of music he makes anyway.) So if I know someone who's alive is a fascist or racist or an abuser etc, I just don't buy his music. There's so much good music in the world I'm not gonna miss one artist's catalog.

Though tbh, even with dead artists, if I've never been particularly interested in their music to begin with, like with John Lennon or David Bowie, knowing they were assholes and abusers is good excuse to keep ignoring their material.

whenever i hear the townshend story i can't help but think of that whole "i was doing research" excuse.

For the most part I don't really seek out much info on the artists I listen to, mostly because I don't like discovering terrible things about artists I like.

Terrible people sometimes make good things and it feels unfair to have to stop listening to these good things just because the artist who created did some unrelated terrible thing.

re: the Who, Keith Moon beat his wife, and that story about him and Glitter doesn't surprise me at all.

This is interesting, though:

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-who-charity-work/

As Townshend recalls the story, the band members were in the midst of recording their Quadrophenia LP when they received a call from Joanna Lumley, the actor now best known for her role as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. Invited to meet her in London, Townshend demurred, but offered to send one of his bandmates in his stead — and Moon volunteered because, as Townshend put it, he was "very much hoping that it would lead to something sexual, I think."

The reality of Moon's meeting with Lumley turned out to be life-alteringly different for the drummer — and his bandmates. "It turned out that what she’d done is invited him to the very, very first women’s refuge in the world [the domestic violence shelter Chiswick’s Women’s Aid, founded in 1971]. And Joanna got him cleaning toilets," said Townshend. "He came back in tears. And he said, ‘Pete, we’ve got to do something for these women!’"

Moon's epiphany took on added meaning for Townshend later, after he realized Moon had been guilty of "real violent outbursts against his wife" during moments when he suspected her of infidelity — sadly ironic because, as Townshend pointed out, "in fact, it was the other way around." In seeing the error of his ways and spurring the band to action, Moon helped spark a lifetime of efforts on behalf of others.

"We started to do shows for the woman [Erin Pizzey] who started [the refuge]. And that’s how charity work began for me and for the band. And we’ve gone on from there," added Townshend. "Anyway, that was a great moment. And it was one of the nicest stories about Keith, I think: that something had touched his heart, because usually he would turn everything into a gag."

whenever i hear the townshend story i can't help but think of that whole "i was doing research" excuse.

― scott seward, Monday, November 13, 2017 4:34 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As Dave Marsh put it at the time, "Yes, the cops had a right and an obligation to look into this. But that isn't what happened. They took somebody and dragged him through as much mud as they could dig up. This is basically about criminalizing investigative behavior — saying, 'You're not allowed to investigate certain things.' And any journalist who doesn't feel threatened by that is not paying attention."

i never much cared for any of his bands, but i was listening to the trap set (podcast) interview with carmine appice for a few minutes when he started talking about how he watched his band members assault a neighborhood girl (and joked about it landing him in prison these days) and then casually said he would "force himself" on girls after they said "no no no" and I almost barfed. Of course, I have heard exactly 0 other people talking about this but it really stuck with me. He was very casual about it. The part starts at 6:06 or so, and I doubt i made it 10 min into the interview before i bailed bc I do not care what this guy has to say about anything. it's possible his feet were held to the fire at some point but i didn't stick around to find out.

tarfumes, i do love that you are captain save-a-who. i love the who! i don't want to think that they were terrible people.

I haven't enjoyed Swans in the same way (or much at all) since the Grimm situation

so much musician stuff is terrible drug & alcohol stuff. i'm NOT condoning or defending behavior, but so much of it is. and being miserable. while high and drunk.

and widespread cultural acceptance of treating women like garbage

that carmine appice story is loathsome!

carmine appice of shit more like

yeah
the teaser for the ep also claimed that he had "slept with" over 4K women :(

Wow, just listened to that Carmine Appice clip. "When Mike Tyson went to prison, I thought 'we used to do that every night'".

Wrt Zep, I think I actually feel worse about how they treated Ellen Sander of Life, which I consider horrifying and indefensible, than about the Page/Maddox relationship, which is weird and gross but afaik not something she herself regards as abusive.

(I'm definitely on the side of separating the art from the artist, though.)

Morbs is OTM. Personally I'm more likely to be put off by an artist's awful history if I don't already know their music too well (Gira), making it easy to not bother investigating any further. Existing favorite artists come out unscathed. I'm strangely less affected by awful artists in music than movie directors/actors/etc. who are human garbage. Not sure what that says

yeah was gonna say Zep were terrible, Bowie I guess I've never heard anything close to Led Zeppelin behavior, but as far as the underage groupies it's hard to parse because Maddox or Pamela Des Barres or Connie Hamzy the GTOs definitely don't seem to regard themselves as victims, and always make it sound like they very much were pursuers in these relationships or one night stands, not that "it was a different time"isn't used far too often as an excuse but it was a hell of a time

she might not consider herself a victim, but Maddox certainly wasn't the "pursuer" with either Page or Bowie

phil spector is prob the worst human being whose work i love, but tbh it's not like he's actually on the records, i think of it as listening to ronnie or darlene love or whoever.

i suspect when jerry lee lewis finally kicks it (and it can't be long) the coverage of his death will be v different now than it might have been 10 years ago.

Well, Lead Belly killed someone too but that just added to the legend.

the pete townshend thing is kinda sad because i find his story p plausible, it seems to be what actually happened, and yet it's such a convoluted story that once the details have faded ppl were just left with this general idea that "hey, that pete townshend, he turned out to be pretty creepy, right?"

Eric Clapton has spent a long time shadowed by his vocal support of Enoch Powell, and Elvis Costello by his comment about Ray Charles (which he still describes as "drunken logic" in which he thought saying the worst possible thing would get him out of an awkward argument).

Lots of things can be (and have been) said about both those situations, and it's not really interesting to rehash. I still own and like many of their admirable records, but I will probably always stop short of endorsing them as admirable people. Just to be on the safe side, not because I don't think they've tried to atone.

I generally draw the line at supporting people who might be putting their money into extremist causes.

Even though I enjoy worse people than him, I completely went off seeing anything more by director Harry Kumel. He slapped one of the female stars of Daughters Of Darkness (the male star punched him for this) and I read an interview with him in which he complained about Swedish women getting fat and I disliked a lot of his opinions. I guess I just disliked him in too many ways and didn't like his film enough to want more.

And there is a writer whose work I think I might like and I'm queasy about possibly buying her work because she harrassed some other people in astonishingly shitty ways.

I once heard that Rik James brutally abused women but I don't know anything about it.

Not extreme at all for this thread, but I recently seen Ghostface Killah saying Cosby had a "pussy problem" and that men should never be ballet dancers.

I laughed about the male ballet dancers part, it's insane.

Costello's excuse is so dumb... he should have apologized instead, instead he just offered excuses. I was drunk and I wanted to annoy these other white men by offending black men. Wtf?

iirc, Costello apologized, while still stressing the “I was drunk!”excuse. And Bowie quickly made an embarrassed apology for his nazi salute.

But not only has Clapton never apologized, as late as 2004 he doubled down on his support of Enoch Powell, calling him “outrageously brave.”

i suspect when jerry lee lewis finally kicks it (and it can't be long) the coverage of his death will be v different now than it might have been 10 years ago.

Well, they already made a whole movie about how he married his 13 year old cousin.

As far as likely murdering a later wife, the Rolling Stone article I linked to above was published in 1984 and I only came across it by dumb luck earlier this year. afaik that story is completely lost to time.

Clapton might also be the only guy on the thread who said he was "into racism".

I once heard that Rik James brutally abused women but I don't know anything about it.

Dude, if you're serious, look this one up (or don't, depending on what you can stomach). A contender for the most messed-up story on this thread.

i'm not actually a fan of hers but courtney love assaulted kathleen hanna back in the 90s, and the way music writers tended to frame it as a "fight" or a "brawl" or whatever has always bugged me

wait what

http://www.mtv.com/news/506111/lollapalooza-back-biting-thurston-moore-squeals-on-courtney/

She got a one-year suspended sentence for assault for that.

Being a fucked-up, drunken mess (but intermittently smart) was always part of Courtney’s persona, so this one should hardly surprise anyone.