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

"and because men" otm

this has been popping on on minneapolis twitter last two days
just a shameful decision by public radio

http://citypages.com/music/mpr-reporter-resigns-cites-stalled-investigation-into-allegedly-abusive-current-dj/572407841

https://www.startribune.com/djs-at-the-current-voice-support-for-mpr-reporter-investigating-colleague/572419822/

Well fuck this guy. And the harassment is just part of his awfulness.

https://www.metalsucks.net/2020/09/28/sexual-harassment-and-bullying-booking-titan-john-finbergs-accusers-speak-out/

Wow!

God, that kept going and getting worse. Absolutely horrifying that such a guy has been encouraged and allowed to prosper by the metal community. What a genuine monster.

Another account of Finberg's sexual harassment, same pattern

I read this today and I'm not surprised.

I was sexually harrassed by John Finberg back in 2018, during Helloween's Pumpkins United Tour in Mexico https://t.co/zUAcuz9Wid

— Tinúviel (@den_akari) September 29, 2020

Producer 5ive invited me to his studio a few years ago to get on nines’ album. This didn’t happen because he tried to rape me in the studio toilets !! He even had to cheek to message me months later saying “I should’ve fucked him cos he’s been signed now”. The industry for u🤮

— 19🧞‍♀️♍️ (@Sariaha9) November 9, 2020

Derrick May

https://djmag.com/longreads/multiple-women-report-sexual-assault-and-harassment-derrick-may

(trigger warning for the in-depth article, as per most of the articles in this thread)

Ah, the DM thread was on it already

https://pitchfork.com/news/octavian-accused-of-abuse-issues-denial/

shit, well fuck him. the noticeably selective denial doesn't do him any favours either

argument is the video of him saying what he did isn't literally a video of him doing it, so he didn't do it. so his defence is that he was lying then, but she's the liar? I hope too many people don't buy it

Diplo

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-dj-diplo-woman-accuse-revenge-porn-20201117-dnx5prt5hjcjnfktv7eznivdly-story.html

Octavian got dropped by his label too

https://www.nme.com/news/music/octavian-denies-accusations-physical-verbal-psychological-abuse-made-by-former-partner-2815000

Also there was a temporary restraining order granted against Diplo so maybe there’s some evidence behind the claim?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/temporary-restraining-order-granted-against-diplo-revenge-porn-case-n1248184

MIA rang the alarm a decade ago on him:

When I got signed by Interscope, he literally smashed my hotel room and broke all the furniture because he was so angry I got picked up by a major label and it was the corniest thing in the world that could possibly happen. And then Missy Elliott called me for the first time in 2005 to work with me on her record, and I’m sure we had a massive fight about that — the fact that I was talking to anyone who was, like, popular. I wish I enjoyed it because I had this person on my shoulder the whole time saying, “It’s shit, it’s shit, it’s shit. You shouldn’t be on the charts. You shouldn’t be in the magazines and you should not be going to interviews. You should not be doing collaborations with famous people. You should be an underground artist.”
So the whole two years I was with him, I just let him dictate. I basically had this man dictate to me how everything in America that I experienced was completely, like, irrelevant and it was nothing. So it was kind of a weird time for me. It was only afterwards, when I went into the second record and I went into it without him, I got to enjoy that by myself. But on the end of that I ran into another man, so the window of me actually being alone, single and a female and being empowered and enjoying what I created was very, very small.
Was Diplo’s mentality like, “You’re selling out”?
Oh, 100 percent. It’s only now when I look back at it in 2015, I can see that he was just jealous and he couldn’t wait to be Taylor Swift’s best friend and date Katy Perry. But at that time I believed him. I just felt like he was right, and he was something of a political, righteous person with some values. I didn’t realize it was just jealousy. That actually, the life that I had and the story that I told through my music and the connections I had with people in the music industry and the connections that I made in the streets of London or around the planet and me being the way I am and my personality — that is what made me make that record. It was really stupid for me to put all that hard work in and evolve as a human being for 25 years and then on the 27th year meet this guy and just give him the batch of controlling it. I think that’s what happens to women, you know: You fall in love, and shit happens.

oh yeah diplo was a known shithead, this particular aspect is new though

pretty repellent stuff about the Growlers, don’t know anything about past issues she mentions.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDR1W0il3_U/

Ugh, that's horrible. I've never heard of the Growlers, but Starcrawler is great. I'm really sorry to hear about that.

Not just the music industry but ugh:

https://pitchfork.com/news/fka-twigs-sues-shia-labeouf-alleging-abuse-and-assault/

Massive new story about Burger Records

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-01-24/burger-records-musicians-sexual-misconduct

Oh man, not a name I expected recognizing in the accused list...

I'll be dumping off a box of records tomorrow.

The Tyde allegation one is the most surprising of that new batch, but it’s all heartbreaking.

As pointed out on Twitter though, that headline is a mess and a terrible framing of the story. It’s the abusive men that “took down” the label and framing it the way the headline does is bullshit victim blaming. The article itself is great, but oof that headline sucks.

I don't see it as victim blaming, unless you perceive that "burger records" stands for "fun and innocence and good times" -- I see it more like "dismantling the gross pedo-friendly patriarchy"

The writing is weird because they keep shifting terms and I'm not sure if they are meant to be read as synonymous or not ... like DIY/underground music scene does not just equal bands that are adjacent to Burger records and pop-punk / garage. It then dials back to "indie" in a few places, and it's like ... geez, I'm glad I don't live in SoCal or have much experience with the scene(s) down there, because otherwise I'd be annoyed all day by the semantic imprecision.

Xps. Yeah they're meaning it in the vain of "these survivors took down this organization of abusers", an empowering framing.

like if you were substitute "The Trump Administration" or "LAPD" for "Burger Records" -- how would that read to you?

I guess I can see both readings, but this below was one of the many tweets I saw that also expressed discomfort with it, which I think is an equally fair take:

When I came out against my abuser in the publishing world they ran articles about the woman who took down a publishing company. Uh, no, my abuser did that. I hate it when they frame us as “taking things down”.

— Hailey-Laine🐎🪐 (@henrytheeVth) January 24, 2021

I get it. Obviously she had some stake in the publishing world and the company, and thus she felt like she was being framed as a spoilsport or breaking a valuable thing, as opposed to someone from the outside (or someone with an existing negative opinion) perceiving it as heroic.

I think the key thing is that the journalism should center the victims if that is what the story promises to be about, and present them as people as opposed to instruments or plot devices (if the victims consent to their stories being told, that is)

Maybe it should have been something like, "The women who exposed the culture of abuse at the heart of L.A.'s music scene." Guess that's a little long...

Don’t get me wrong, Burger deserved to go away (at a bare minimum) and these women are fantastic for standing up against the shitty culture they enabled for so long. It’s an important piece and I’m glad it’s well reported and sourced.

And some of it is about "audience" -- like who is going to read the article. An LA Times article is going to have a different audience than if that headline was in an article published by Pitchfork or Vice where more of the audience would be likely to have been sympathetic to Burger Records prior to the call outs. LA Times is gonna be like, people's moms and dads who might call or email their kids who are under 50 and say, "do you know these people? Did you have any burger records?"

A company. Publishing. The nerve! That tweet otm

xp morris: there are a lot of "music scenes" in LA and this article is not that broad... that would be a really shitty headline, though it would get people's attention!

I guess the headline just reminded me too much of the Twitter fanboys who are always saying shit like, “this girl ruined the scene” or “she broke up the band”.

xp Well, as you noted above, the article does implicate the music scene beyond just that label ("Similar stories from dozens of women soon began pouring into Redd’s direct message box [...] many were about the local underground music scene in general."), and it makes the label sound like a central part of the scene. If that's not accurate, than maybe that aspect is not being portrayed accurately.

Like if this were just about a few bands and some hinky-dinky label, it would not be as "big" a story. The tendrils of this seem to reach in many directions; even the Smell is mentioned, though only as a place where one of the women first began going to shows (and the Smell scene doesn't seem to overlap, from what I can see, though it's been years since I've had any first-hand awareness of it).

it does implicate it, however, it doesn't really capture the breadth of all the varied DIY/underground spaces/communities presenting music in LA -- which is a very very very large city and inclusive of a bunch of suburbs. This being ILM, I am certain we are all aware that there are many genres of music that aren't pop-punk and rock, yeah?

and tbh, if this was in say, Denver or Iowa City, and not LA, it would not be as "big" a story

I guess it seems pretty clear to me what they mean by "underground/DIY music scene," so I'm not sure I follow your point about other genres.

uh, you are aware that underground/DIY music comprises a lot of different genres, right?

Yes, but I'm not sure how that's relevant or how you would like that point acknowledged in the article (which I didn't write), so we can drop it.

(if this is about my fake headline just saying "music scene," fine - I was just trying to come up with an alternate that, as you said, presents the women as people with agency and doesn't hinge on their victimhood, while giving a more accurate feel for the story.)

yeah it started being about your headline, and then it was about what seemed your ignorance of/unfamiliarity with DIY/underground music and how different communities use that term, and how some of them are like very "un-burger records-y"

though considering now it's been almost a year without shows in CA, it seems weird arguing about tbh ... sorry

honestly, I am also on edge because the G.S. criminal case against Almena got "resolved" yesterday and so the "DIY/underground music scene" has been a hot topic again

The article also says Burger "published recordings by nearly 1,200 bands during its 13 years in existence" so it really does stand that Burger was a nexus point of a bigger Los Angeles scene problem

no one could’ve seen a member from the Black Lips being a grade A creep.

feels like In the Red records would have skeletons in their closet as well since there’s overlap.