Dated Casual Racism In Popular Music

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life:

Yellow man in Timbuktu

Shit at Geography as well.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

Speaking of Jagger...

Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in a market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright
Hear him whip the women just around midnight

Brown sugar
How come you taste so good?
Brown sugar
Just like a young girl should

Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' where it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doing alright
You shoulda heard him just around midnight

Brown sugar
How come you taste so good, now?
Brown sugar
Just like a young girl should

Ah, get along, brown sugar
How come you taste so good
Ah, got me feelin' now, brown sugar
Just like a black girl should

Similarly, Grand Funk Railroad's 'Black Licorice':

Time, ain't on my side, I'm losin' it more each day.
Licorice, licorice.
She's got evil in her eyes, and catnip is her taste.
Licorice, licorice.
She wraps me up in her slender legs, her hot black skin to mine.
Licorice, licorice.
Ple ... ple ...please, don't touch me, oh, I know I'm dead this time.
Oh, oh, yeah ... licorice, yeah, black licorice.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

Variations of Queen's "No Synths Were Used In The Making Of This Record" boast appearing during times when rocks radio dominance was threatened by trends like funk, disco, hiphop, etc. Taking pride in no drum machines.

Did Queen do that as well? I was aware Collins put "No Fairlight was used in the making of this record" probably as a jibe to Peter Gabriel.

Queen started it.

The "no synthesisers" boast started on their eponymous first album in 1973, recorded in 1972. It was Brian May being precious about the trouble he took over various effects without relying on synths like other bands. Maybe he we snobbish about being lumped in with prog bands too, but anyway, unless he was having a go at Stevie Wonder and TONTO, I don't think there was anything more to it than that at the time.

[Satchmo Distel]

Agreed. He was simply annoyed at not being given due credit for how he layered the guitars.

[Dr Rock]

50 points now on offer for Scott Walker's dated casual racism

[kalowski]

50 points now on offer for Scott Walker's dated casual racism

I'm not going to sleep tonight...

[jobotic]

Jackie?

[phantom_power]

50 points now on offer for Scott Walker's dated casual racism

Was it his original version of I'm That Type of N****, later covered by The Pharcyde?

[Brundle-Fly]

Yeah, it's very much of a piece, but I prefer XTC's take.

Not dissimilar to 'First of the Gang to Die', I suppose. A coquettish wink and nod to his diehards (except the skinheads tended to throw sharpened 50p coins at him, rather than the garlands that his Latino fans hurled - I wonder how reconciled that contradiction.)

If you're referring to Madstock '92, I was right down the front and didn't see any sharpened 50ps lobbed about by skins or this so-called barrage of bottles thrown at him. There was a bit of booing from the fans (of all different degrees of hair growth) but only because many didn't want to hear fey indie music at a Madness comeback gig, especially after Ian Dury & The Blockheads had just warmed up the crowd stupendously. Morrissey's billing was completely misjudged by Moz management or the organisers there. There was definitely a minority of old far right trouble makers in attendance that I won't deny but to say all these old fascists were riled up because Morrissey draped himself in their precious flag and had a backdrop of two skinhead girls I think is nonsense, They might have felt a bit patronised, perhaps? I felt a morsel of sympathy for all the Morrissey fans who had bought tickets for the Sunday gig after he'd bailed. They must've been fuming.

[Dr Rock]

Jackie?

Go on...

[Brundle-Fly]

Go on...

Spanish bum?

[SteveDave]

"Locked up inside my opium den
Surrounded by some china men"

[Dr Rock]

"Locked up inside my opium den
Surrounded by some china men"

50 points to SteveDave!


Shame on the rest of you presumably going round saying Chinamen in 2021.

[jobotic]

That's the bit I was referring to!

I should get some of those points.

[Dr Rock]

Ok you can have 50 points also. And an ice cream.

[jobotic]

Yes!

[kalowski]

It's not racist if it's also a cricket delivery.

[phantom_power]

50 points to SteveDave!


Shame on the rest of you presumably going round saying Chinamen in 2021.

Maybe it was talking about figurines

Anyway, Jacques Brel should take the blame for most of that as he wrote the original lyrics

[gib]

If you're referring to Madstock '92, I was right down the front and didn't see any sharpened 50ps lobbed about by skins or this so-called barrage of bottles thrown at him. There was a bit of booing from the fans (of all different degrees of hair growth) but only because many didn't want to hear fey indie music at a Madness comeback gig, especially after Ian Dury & The Blockheads had just warmed up the crowd stupendously. Morrissey's billing was completely misjudged by Moz management or the organisers there. There was definitely a minority of old far right trouble makers in attendance that I won't deny but to say all these old fascists were riled up because Morrissey draped himself in their precious flag and had a backdrop of two skinhead girls I think is nonsense, They might have felt a bit patronised, perhaps? I felt a morsel of sympathy for all the Morrissey fans who had bought tickets for the Sunday gig after he'd bailed. They must've been fuming.

i reckon he always wanted to be accepted by your skins but his inability to enjoy reggae got in the way of things

[kalowski]

Maybe it was talking about figurines

Anyway, Jacques Brel should take the blame for most of that as he wrote the original lyrics

Tout seul au fond de ma fumerie
Pour un public de vieux Chinois
All alone at the bottom of my den
For an audience of old Chinese

I don't imagine Walker did the translation, Mort Shulman wasn't it? Wonder if it could be improved? (ie made less racist).

[phantom_power]

Is it racist to say there were some Chinese people in an opium den? I mean it is all in character anyway so any racism is on the part of the narrator, not the author

[Pauline Walnuts]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKtNawQ3cxM

Still, it's got a good beat.

[Dr Rock]

No, it's Chinaman or Chinamen that's the offensive term. But at the time of recording I'm not even sure that memo had gone round yet.

[phantom_power]

The character narrating the song is a reprobate selling "authentic queers and phony virgins". I don't think it is racism to have a character be racist

[Satchmo Distel]

Doesn't Brel's couplet imply he's the only white man in the den? Like saying everyone else in my crack den was black?

[daf]

No, it's Chinaman or Chinamen that's the offensive term. But at the time of recording I'm not even sure that memo had gone round yet.

On similar line's there's a rather clever bit of wordplay in George Formby's wartime sequel to "Chinese Laundry Blues" that'd probably get chucked out these days : Mr. Wu's An Air Raid Warden Now

Spoiler alert

"So if you've got a chink in your window, (hey), you'll have another one at your door!!"

[close]

In his defence, he didn't write it, though I don't think there was any malice involved . . . unlike this one, where he puts Anglo-French relations back 1000 years : I'm a Froggie

[JesusAndYourBush]

Scott Saunders - "Clap Clap", from the 1943 short film Playtime For Workers.
The one IMDB review notes that Scott Saunders song had been edited out of the copy he has. This is why.

[Satchmo Distel]

Seems to be Sanders, not Saunders.

https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba6f2d743

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

Not in the music itself, more a bit of casual racism of the West Brom stadium announcer before their match against Dinamo Bucharest in 1968: "Well, they'm the same, ay they?"

The Baggies found themselves playing Dinamo Bucharest at home. Unable to locate a copy of the Romanian national anthem, the announcer went for "close enough" and thus it was that the Romanians trotted out to the sound of Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen's rendition of "Midnight In Moscow".

[Satchmo Distel]

Scott Saunders - "Clap Clap", from the 1943 short film Playtime For Workers.
The one IMDB review notes that Scott Saunders song had been edited out of the copy he has. This is why.

Three songs were omitted so it may not have been for racism:

The songs omitted from this reissue version are 'The Japanese, the Jerries and the Wops' (Scott Sanders), 'Jealousy' (The Cavendish Three), and 'United We Stand' (Maurice Taylor).

http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/150253905

Same guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg31kTi01Rc

https://www.discogs.com/artist/2542779-Scott-Sanders-2