rolling #metoo thread for sexual harassment in the music industry so no one misses out when artists we don't give a fuck about like Tim Westwood and Bassnectar get caught

its hard to process when a huge part, maybe the hugest part, of an artist's project is how sexuality fits into the universe they constructed

I wouldn't say it's hard, rather that my take on it was that he was projecting a stage persona most of the time and I hoped/assumed he turned it off when it wasn't appropriate (which is of course naive when actually considered but still).

i'm starting to think that being a sexual predator / sexual power dynamics are like the quiet part of what being a successful pop star is or has always been about - the open secret. some people really seemed to relish it / some people were reluctant participants but obviously that doesn't change the end result - the pain of countless women (and queers) who suffered abuse.

'pop star' but also music industry exec etc.

this is a little out-of-bounds of this thread but i have my theories about why sexual abuse is so commonly done by people in these positions of power. part of it is the alienation of being an industrial exploiter in an exploitative capitalist framework - that very easily translates into sexual exploitation.

imo. anyway.. bassnectar sucks

I would like to think there's a clear line between "sexual power dynamics" and "sexual predator" that is defined by consent but... humanity seems hellbent on making that impossible

In the Bassnectar thread, I mentioned some half-remembered accusations toward some guy who was on the business side of things. I think he was a promoter or something in Brooklyn? Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

I would like to think there's a clear line between "sexual power dynamics" and "sexual predator" that is defined by consent

for sure

i'm starting to think that being a sexual predator / sexual power dynamics are like the quiet part of what being a successful pop star is or has always been about

― carin' (map)

i hate to sound like a second-wave feminist but i do feel like there is inherently a sexual component to the paradigm of masculine power

yeah i mean i guess what i was trying to say is that abuse in the culture industry is like a reflection of the fact that the culture industry abuses people for product. it sees people as objects for consumption so treating people as sexual objects is in line with that, especially for people who are really invested in that model. and more predatory kinds of behaviors are like an enhanced version of that. not trying to discount the elements of patriarchy that play into this but imo it's not just men behaving like pigs, it's a larger complex of alienation that brings in capitalism and sometimes weird quasi-religious cultism (after all music is pretty magical/spiritual).

i don't want to minimize the awfulness of the phenomenon and how prevalent it is.

i mean, i'd argue that it's not just "culture", i'd argue that anywhere you see powerful men, in for instance circumstances of political power, those situations are very conducive to abuse.

I assume the abuse is functional as part of the power & how it’s maintained/reproduced

I wouldn't say it's hard, rather that my take on it was that he was projecting a stage persona most of the time and I hoped/assumed he turned it off when it wasn't appropriate (which is of course naive when actually considered but still).

remember that Sinead O'Connor physically fled from her one personal meeting with Prince after she'd had an international #1 record with a song he wrote. one presumes that he was worse with women who weren't ostensibly rich and powerful, although also that he had an eye for targets who were already susceptible to abuse due to past victimhood.

oh, I'd always assumed that she fled due to him being a sex creep; apparently last year she revealed that he had weird control issues over her having a hit without being one of his intentional proteges, wanted her to submit to being his protege and agree to only speak publicly in a manner he approved of, and physically attacked her when she declined. And, while her reportage these days isn't always reliable, that a female emplyee of his was hospitalised with broken ribs from a beating at the time.

this thread is super depressing but this made me lol irl

I hear that Gesualdo guy was an asshole.

― pomenitul, Thursday, July 9, 2020 7:36 PM (yesterday)bookmarkflaglink

and yet he's still being played every hour, on the hour, on classic rock radio, sickening

― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, July 9, 2020 7:38 PM (yesterday)

we all know rock n roll was partly built on this but it would be nice if we didn’t have to wait for the people to die, then wait for the mourning to die down, before any kind of minor reckoning with them. even nicer if it was their peers calling them out but that’s not happening & who else wants to deal with the threats

I can't believe Jimmy Page has spent the last 40 years living the life of luxury instead of serving a hefty prison sentence. Gary Glitter must look at that guy and conclude that his own biggest mistake was failing to grease the right palms.

I think it's more about failing to be in Led Zeppelin and being Gary Glitter instead.

fans were openly talking about child rape like it was supposed to be hilarious/awesome/badass until v recently, it was apparently a selling point

in the UK after jimmy savile there was a brief moment when more ppl actually seemed to want to deal with this shit, interest seemed to die down a lot after the behaviour of actual cool people started being questioned

In my city there are a lot of disturbing allegations coming to light on the music 'scene' right now

Stranger still is people with a reputation for being dodgy themselves being very publicly vocal in the pile-on against those who have abusive tendencies, almost as if they have something to hide

Funny that

Different world here of course

a coke dealer who is at after hours venues here often that is an acquaintance of mine posted a notes app apology for his toxic behavior in his Insta story recently. weird world we're in

Weird that he apologized, not weird whatsoever that local scenes are crawling w creeps??

yeah, it was the apology with the language and format of a public figure or artist that was incongruous. after hours drug dealer definitely not a surprising person to be a creep

I think it’s good that this nobody loser creep apologized publicly. If that happened more often maybe fewer people would have to endure being harassed and assaulted.

the booker at a significant venue here has been publically accused of some really grim stuff, and the way it has snowballed has been horrible to watch. It's been an open secret for nearly a decade that this man has been violent, aggressive and abusive to other men in the local music scene, and a number of women have come out in the past few weeks explaining that their relationships with him have been characterised by domestic abuse. But because he's managed to position himself as someone with influence and power within the local scene, very few people have felt able to speak out about this stuff. It's the classic story of how these guys manage to get away with it and for so long: manouvre into a situation where they have power, then abuse that power to allow shitty behaviour to go unchallenged.

People like that might suddenly find themselves very exposed when venues run out of cash and start closing down.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCqb8P3FJb5/

^ Clem Creevy of Cherry Glazerr names Sean Redman, former bandmate and current bassist of the Buttertones, as a statutory rapist.

No longer current, it seems and they've been dropped by the label too.

I saw some allegations on twitter against the singer as well.

never heard of em before but good job all around

Quebec's being rocked by a new #MeToo movement, where people make (non-anonymous) allegations to certain websites/FB groups, who vet the reports somehow and then publish these allegations anonymously. (Obviously lots could go wrong here.)

More than 1100 people have been named so far, including celebrated local musicians like Kevin Parent, Bernard Adamus, Alex Nevsky, Yann Perreault and members of Simple Plan, Timber Timbre, Radio Radio, etc. It's much heavier/broader than any previous MeToo stuff to hit here. https://dissonnom.wordpress.com/?fbclid=IwAR3xrYuFh69clvKTE_RwFgb2hk0Fp5Z39gu6ZNC4z1w8lrjzU2-SaF6OtqM

so...pretty much everyone, then?

who vet the reports somehow

How does this work, exactly?

i read a detailed post about it on Victims_Voices_Montreal (which has since been taken down)... my impression was that most of the vetting comes down to trying to flag if the accuser is a sock-puppet or troll. obviously: not without the capacity to make mistakes.

https://www.instagram.com/lured_by_burger_records/

yeah that's really disgusting stuff

i feel like that label fits in with whiney's "PIZZA!" thread

in more ways than one

snorted out loud at work

Interesting, that link sean posted about the Quebec allegations has already disappeared.

came here to post the lured by burger insta. definitely not cool how widespread it seemed to be in that scene. i fucking hate people ugh.

As the Burger stuff comes to light, a lot of people on Twitter are also saying that Mac DeMarco has had credible allegations? Has anyone seen this?

idk about mdm. after hearing about this stuff so much recently from la scene dudes, i kind of just get totally cynical and start believing that any dude who plays guitar is like that to some extent or another. i know: i'm not being fair, but jfc how common is this sort of behavior in "the scene"?

unrelated, but over the last week there have also been allegations thrown at london singer songwriter cosmo pyke which sucks because i genuinely like his music.

also sorry for the reddit link; the twitter account that was highlighted for initially calling him out is on private or restricted or whatever twitter's variation of that is. big time trigger warning for that link, btw. tons of victim blaming / shaming. it's reddit; you probably already know.

I'll bet my house Mac DeMarco is a piece of shit

there was already this

http://archive.is/iURtf

As the Burger stuff comes to light, a lot of people on Twitter are also saying that Mac DeMarco has had credible allegations? Has anyone seen this?

― Badmotorfinger Debate Club (MFB), Monday, July 20, 2020 3:53 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have heard things about Mac Demarco

(my gf knew him when he lived here and knew girls who had unpleasant experiences with him)

"clearly, the responsible thing to do here is to rebrand our name in all caps and no vowels, it's the only way to atone" pic.twitter.com/Bb2hmftagT

— Al Shipley (@alshipley) July 21, 2020

if they’re not that bad ooh they picked a really bad title

Uh...

https://variety.com/2024/music/news/sean-diddy-combs-homes-raided-sex-trafficking-investigation-1235951601/

“Holy shit” doesn’t quite cover it

(Though, given the recent news …)