Dated Casual Racism In Popular Music

[kalowski]

Pretty sure this is a mocked-up picture from a story on Newsthump:

I knew it was fake. I was trying out the famous "kalowski humour".

[zomgmouse]

I've just read that 'The Dreaming' was originally titled 'The Abo Song' until 'Bush and EMI were informed that "Abo" is a racial slur in Australia'. The promo copies in circulation were recalled and the track was renamed.

https://www.discogs.com/Kate-Bush-The-Dreaming-Abo-Song/release/6919933

I think it's just Kate trying (perhaps a little clumsily) to empathise creatively with the suffering of a culture far removed from her own. As the recall cited above demonstrates, she wasn't trying to be deliberately insensitive (rather the opposite) - but it also demonstrates the weaknesses in the idea that an artist can write about anything they like, from any perspective.[nb]not an idea I'm necessarily opposed to. After all, the (heavily researched) script for the brilliant Four Lions, penned by the distinctly white Chris Morris, Sam Bain, and Jesse Armstrong, features a lot of slurs that you wouldn't want to hear from their own mouths.[/nb]

Yeah that's more or less my own thoughts on the matter. Plus the fact that Rolf Harris plays the didgeridoo.

[SullySullivan85]

I knew it was fake. I was trying out the famous "kalowski humour".

No worries, are there any nice AirBnBs near this famous historical site post lockdown?

[kalowski]

No worries, are there any nice AirBnBs near this famous historical site post lockdown?

Tickets are cheap.

[kngen]

McLaren was just (as with so many things) pretending to have come up with something that he'd actually seen on his holidays (in this case, Ron Asheton of the Stooges wearing SS uniforms on stage).

I find Siouxsie's posturing hilarious, though, as she would go onto become incandescent about punk (which she whined was about 'art and bondage') being hijacked by oiks from the football terraces (e.g. Sham, the Subs and the Rejects), and singing about living on council estates. Yes, that's much worse than wearing a fucking swastika isn't it, you poncy arsehole.

[Kankurette]

Gasp! Not council estates!

[Ignatius_S]

McLaren was just (as with so many things) pretending to have come up with something that he'd actually seen on his holidays (in this case, Ron Asheton of the Stooges wearing SS uniforms on stage)....

Re: lifting ideas - Matlock commented that if you came up with an idea (e.g for the King's Road shop), McLaren would be dismissive, but in say a couple of weeks, the idea was realised and no acknowledgement ever given where it had come from. That said, various people have said that McLaren was essentially obsessed with Nazi imagery and symbols, so suspect there was something at play deeper psychologically than nicking an idea he thought was good.

That kind of gear had wider currency - e.g. One of the members of The Sweet indulged in 'Nazi chic' and on one Top of the Pops performance wore a Swastika armband - so would be loathe to state a single example as a sole influence.

McLaren and Westwood made costumes for films - one of their creations was the short dress adorned with crucifix and swastika for Ken Russell's Mahler and which so features so predominantly in stills and posters, which I suspect influenced the clothes later sold at SEX.

[thecuriousorange]

One in a Million by Guns n Roses would be a good song, if only we could see about changing some of those lyrics.

[DrGreggles]

One in a Million by Guns n Roses would be a good song, if only we could see about changing some of those lyrics.

To be fair to Axl Rose (and I don't like being fair to Axl Rose), isn't that written from the PoV of a kid from a hick town arriving in the big city for the first time?

[kalowski]

To be fair to Axl Rose (and I don't like being fair to Axl Rose), isn't that written from the PoV of a kid from a hick town arriving in the big city for the first time?

I used words like police and n****rs because you're not allowed to use the word 'n****r.' Why can black people go up to each other and say, 'n****r,' but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big putdown? I don't like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I can't say. I used the word 'n****r' because it's a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word 'n****r' doesn't necessarily mean black. Doesn't John Lennon have a song "Woman Is the N****r of the World"? There's a rap group, N.W.A. – N****rs With Attitude. I mean, they're proud of that word. More power to them.

[McChesney Duntz]

To be fair, ol' W. Axl appears to be on the side of the righteous these days, and I'm sure would repudiate those lyrics now. (If you had told 1990 me that Axl would be the good one and Morrissey... well, say no more...)

[Satchmo Distel]

Without wishing to rehash the Morrissey thread, 'Bengali In Platforms' and "all reggae is vile" and "you have to be black to get played on daytime Radio 1" were all before 1990.

[Brundle-Fly]

Without wishing to rehash the Morrissey thread, 'Bengali In Platforms' and "all reggae is vile" and "you have to be black to get played on daytime Radio 1" were all before 1990.

I'll only defend Morrissey on one of those crimes. There is a beloved poster on CaB who thinks all reggae is vile but they're vehemently anti-racist. Some people just really really don't like reggae. I feel sorry for them.

[SteveDave]

I'll only defend Morrissey on one of those crimes. There is a beloved poster on CaB who thinks all reggae is vile but they're vehemently anti-racist. Some people just really really don't like reggae. I feel sorry for them.

Am I beloved? Shucks guys.

[Brundle-Fly]

Sorry, there are two beloved posters who think etc

[Johnboy]

Japanese Boy by Aneka

ah, those 1981 chart toppers, eh?

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

I'll only defend Morrissey on one of those crimes. There is a beloved poster on CaB who thinks all reggae is vile but they're vehemently anti-racist. Some people just really really don't like reggae. I feel sorry for them.

Also, he didn't say all reggae is vile - it was one of those end-of-year questionnaire things in the NME, and for 'favourite reggae record' he answered 'reggae is vile'.

There's sort of a subtle difference, but I'm darned if I can put my finger on it.

[Brundle-Fly]

He later claimed he was misheard and he'd actually said, 'Reggae is wild'.  You wag, Moz.

[boki]

He was saying "Boooooo-yaka"

[Satchmo Distel]

He actually said "all reggae is Kurt Weill".

However, as The Beatles noted about Enoch Powell, he "don't dig no Pakistani." Infact, even pre-Smiths he wrote to a pen-pal that "I don't hate Pakistanis, but I dislike them immensely."

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

Speaking of the P-word...I hate to grass The Slits up because they were fantastic, but the Peel Session version of 'Shoplifting' had the line "Mr p**i won't lose much, and we'll have dinner tonight" (amended to "Babylon won't lose much" for the album).

[kalowski]

Actually reggae is fairly dull. That's a sweeping statement because there's some great music that's come out of Jamaica and the surrounding islands, but for me as it gets slower post Blue Beat it gets duller. I love the uptempo Ska stuff of the 60s and the funky rock steady sounds of the early 70s, like Toots, but I always felt that through the 70s the music got slower, duller, and swamped with echoing guitars.

I should point out that I'm a bigger racist than Morrissey.

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

There's a bit of a difference between 'fairly dull' and 'vile' though.  Anyone who could genuinely call reggae vile is a bit of a wrong 'un in my book.

[jobotic]

Yeah but it's Morrissey innit?

I heard that Nick Griffin reckons Tuvan Throat Singing "sounds awful to these Anglo-Saxon ears". Bit suspect.

[Satchmo Distel]

Mozza also said all reggae is black supremacism, which would be a shock to white or mixed reggae acts.

[gib]

struggling to think of a single example of black supremacism in reggae

[kngen]

struggling to think of a single example of black supremacism in reggae

Well, if you were to interpret 'uhuru' as being 'freedom' but from a specifically black/African perspective (e.g. the liberation of African countries from British colonial rule, such as Kenya in 1963) then Black Uhuru suggests a kind of tautological 'super-double freedom from whitey' that could be interpreted as black supremacist if you're as drunk and bored as I am now, and also not entirely serious. 

[Travis Leisure]

Ryan Cooder, fresh from exploiting the living shit out of the Buena Vista social club - appropriated "Chinito, Chinito" a racist Mexican folk song calling on Chinese to "toca la malaca" and "lava la lopa".

[Pauline Walnuts]

Err..

[kalowski]

Err..

Hence this release by James Brown and the JBs.
https://www.superthrowbackparty.net/2015/01/who-is-above-average-black-band-aabb.html?m=1