For those of you who didn't see this on Slashdot, it seems that ClearChannel Communications (a rather huge radio conglomerate in the US, owners of Ann Arbor's Kool 107, W4 Country, and WTKA) have issued a list of songs that are not to be played on any ClearChannel station until further notice. The complete list of forbidden songs can be found at http://www.fuckedcompany.com/extras/clearchannel_email.cfm Among the highlights (low points?) of the list that should probably not be on the list(in my opinion): Cat Stevens - Peace Train Led Zepplin - Stairway to Heaven Billy Joel - Only the Good Die Young Shelly Fabares - Johnny Angel Surfaris - Wipeout47 responses total.
Ronnie Dio's "Holy Diver"? Hell, Pat Boone covered that song. This is what happens when we assume that deregulation is OK.
(Now linked to music as item 36)
I don't know pop music well enough to see a pattern here. What counts as "questionable content" in their eyes?
"Walk like an Egyptian": racism "Mack the Knife": celebrating a murderer "Obla di, Obla da": Not for everyone, eh? "What a Wonderful World": It is? Is this list real? I dunno. But it took a certain creativity to compile.
Believe it or not, also on that list was John Lennon's "Imagine"! I guess they consider a song about peace inappropriate when everybody's talking about wanting to go to war.
Stairway to Heaven? Why? I'm not seeing the connnection, either. This is an incredible list. All Rage against the Machine songs? Maybe they object to the anti-government nature of the band. Four Metallica songs? I recognize a lot of these. The ban Tool's "intolerance," not a major radio single to begin with, but leave Grammy-winning AEnema permitted. Must not be content related--Aenema is a stunning song about the violent crash of Los Angeles into the sea, insulting numerous types of people in the process. Here are the lyrics to "intolerance," courtesy of toolshed.down.net. I don't want to be hostile. I don't want to be dismal. But I don't want to rot in an apathetic existance either. See I want to believe you, and I want to trust and I want to have faith to put away the dagger. But you lie, cheat, and steal. And yet I tolerate you. Veil of virtue hung to hide your method while I smile and laugh and dance and sing your praise and glory. Shroud of virtue hung to mask your stigma as I smile and laugh and dance and sing your glory while you lie, cheat, and steal. How can I tolerate you. Our guilt,our blame , I've been far too sympathetic. Our blood, our fault. I've been far too sympathetic. I am not innocent. You are not innocent. Noone is innocent. I will no longer tolerate you Even if I must go down beside you. Because, Noone is innocent. Must have vague terrorist implications. U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday," decrying violence, must as well. That's the only possible link... anything related to flying or explosions. Hyper, hypersensitive. I guess people are expected to go into convulsions if they hear "new York, New York." I would too, but only because they play it after Yankee games. Why, oh why, are they so stupid? These are some pretty dumb songs to ban. I'm still trying to figure out why they banned "Head like a Hole" from Nine Inch Nails, and nothing else.
Richard slipped in, changing nothing in my response.
Cat Stevens is probably on this stupid list because of his conversion to Islam some years ago.
Or, more specifically, because of his unpopular support for the Iranian- issued fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which has stained his public image with the perception of connection to hard-line anti-western elements.
re Cat: Yeah. I remember seeing a video clip asking him what he thought about folk burning his records in 1990. He said he'd burn them too. (Many 'new' converts to any religion tend to be rather conservative - its not just islam. I'd suspect he'd not be in favor of the recent events though.) I can see radio stations being considerate of advertising revenue by banning some songs perhaps and its nothing new (I remember glen roberts organizing a small group of people to periodically mass call a certain A2 radio station and request Alice Cooper songs which were banned for some reason (my how times have changed)). Public media probably ought to act in a responsible fashion and try to not enflame emotions at times like these (or perhaps in general) maybe. But is it really so clear that the likes of Martin Luther King ought to be banned and those of KKK spokespersons be permitted (deliberate 'mistake')? Wasn't it Steve Dahl that had a popular parody of _Barbara-Ann_ that played some years ago? Should it have been banned? As for _Imagine_, as I christian I think it ought to be... played. I think it is a pretty song.
(If that's the one I'm thinking of, I still sing that refrain now and again.)
SHIT! My bad. I shoulda checked out http://www.snopes.com before responding to this post. Its an 'urban legend' folks - although there is a tiny grain of truth in it (very tiny). I would also suggest that folk check out the page before entering items they've 'heard' or got in e-mail. /SHIT!
LA Times music critic Robert Hilburn, in an article titled
"Judging Songs by their Titles," addresses the program directors
of the Clear Channel stations:
"Far from being distasteful, many of the 150 songs on that
long list of 'lyrically questionable' recordings sent to you
by the home office are exactly what you *should* be playing in
the aftermath of last week's terrorist attacks."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091901hilburn.story
Salon has written about Clear Channel Communications at length:
it's a rather brutish corporation with no particular love of
music which now has a stranglehold on the country's rock music radio.
Love the Telecomm Act of 1986!
Again. Don't you get it? Its not true. Its another urban legend. Yer gettin' pissed off about something that ain't even real. (In the real (FTF) world I would hesitate to point this out to anyone as my experience as well as observing the experience of others is that nobody likes to be told they've been an idiot and instead of getting mad at whomever passed on to them the basis of their idiocy they instead get pissed at you. 'kill the messenger' as it were.)
It's not a hoax, Huang. Read the Snopes account more closely. The tiny grain of falsehood in it (very tiny) is the claim that Clear Channels officially banned these songs. Some program director at Clear Channels DID compile a list (it's not entirely clear if it's THIS list, though), and DID distribute it. Here is the report from Slate of Clear Channels' own original statement: "Jack Evans, a regional senior VP of programming at Clear Channel insisted this list was not an effort initiated by management: "After and during what was happening in New York and Washington and outside of Pittsburgh, some of our program directors began e-mailing each other about songs and questionable song titles," though the finished list was distributed to the program directors by Clear Channel management." Clear Channel's own press release (at biz.yahoo.com) says nothing about the list not being real, only that they haven't actually banned songs.
Thus the 'banned list' doesn't exist, and thus 'Clear Channel' didn't ban songs thus it is an 'urban legend' thus posted as such on http://www.snopes.com . I don't see an item about ABC network's decision to stop broadcasting video of the planes smashing into the towers every 34 seconds. Is ABC 'censoring' because they have a clue about 'sensitivity'? (ABC et all took a major financial hit by not carrying or 'breaking' for commercials so one can sure conclude it wasn't for financial reasons and thus they are actually 'sensitive'.)
For a clue re-read item #0 and think for a few seconds.
Re #6: Personally I think some of these songs are only on the list because they're terminally overplayed anyway. I'd put 'American Pie', 'Stairway to Heaven', and 'Ironic' in those categories. (Though I think the first two are good songs.)
"American Pie" is about people dying in a plane crash. You might not be able to pick that up from the lyrics, though, because you need to know the history behind it (the pivotal incident being the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper, allegedly drunk when they convinced their pilot to take off in a snowstorm: "And good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye, singin' 'This'll be the day that I die'"). The song is really about the death of innocence in pop music, characterized by tht single event. The most glaring absence from the list, which is what led me to believe it was a fabrication (because this song should be in the top ten in any music expert's mind for being wholly inappropriate from its title, even though its content is irrelevant): The Cure, "Killing an Arab." I'd assumed "Obla-di Obla-da" was on the list for suggesting that "life goes on." the list looks more like the first major Sick Joke than a serious list.
Heh. Slate's followup piece is titled: "Profiles in Ass Covering."
Huang: The list exists. No denials have been issued that the list published is indeed the list that Clear Channels ADMITS THAT THEY DISTRIBUTED. The "hoax" - the ONLY hoax admitted to date - is the tiny grain of falsehood (very tiny) that the list was an official ban on the songs. You remind me of the people who insist that Alexander Pope never wrote "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing", uh-uh, no way, it's a complete fabrication - because the actual quote is "A little learning". Or that the Earth isn't round - because it's slightly oblate. That Clear Channels banned the songs is untrue - but a reasonable misinterpretation given what they DID do. And it's the lunacy of even SUGGESTING that these songs not be played that's the shocking and silly thing here, and the reason the list warrants being giggled at. Only if it turns out that the entire list was the product of a jokester will the list itself warrant the description "hoax". And there is no evidence of that to date.
The allegation in this item has been that, as a service to local operators, Clear Channel compiled a list of songs that other operators had said they were going to avoid playing. That's a far different thing from Clear Channel generating a list on its own and then distributing it. So it's not quite a hoax, but it is a major exagerration.
http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/hoaxes/radio.htm The list exists. But it was meant only as a list of songs affiliates might not want to play immediately after the plane crash. Or so says Snopes. I'm not sure how far to trust a company whose pages have a "The URL for this page is" line on the bottom of the page with a URL that does not work.
Snopes isn't really a company. It's more of a ... thing. I dunno what to call it. Not a company, though.
There's gullibility ... and there's gullibility.
I have started hearing The Beatles "All You Need Is Love" more than I have in the past. I have not heard "Imagine" in the past week or so.
Have you had your medicine adjusted recently, Tim? That my explain the change. Or do you mean on the RADIO? ;}
I once flew on a plane that played the Buddy Holly Story during supper. (It was rather amusing without headphones - most of the action consisted of people opening their mouths and waving their arms around). Peace Train might conceivably hurt airline revenues by reminding people that it is safer to take the train. Amtrak got a lot of extra business recently. Was 'Leaving on a Jet Plane' on the list?
yes, "Leavin on a Jet Plane" was on the list. But only the Peter, Paul, and Mary version, not the John Denver version.
Jim is cracking up over this last response and asks 'Huh?'.
Presumably John Denver is considered more likely to be in solidarity with airplane-crash victims.. :-O
Yeah, nothin' by Ricky Nelson, then, either...
resp:28 - does the film "The Buddy Holly Story" include his death? Kind of an odd choice to play on an airplane if so ...
Oh, and re watching movies without the sound - I saw "A Walk in the Clouds" that way, and I didn't miss a thing.
#33> In "Airplane!", the inflight movie is one of the Airport movies, I believe.
I have not seen "The Buddy Holly Story", but in "La Bamba" (the movie about Ritchie Valens), there were some scenes of planes exploding in mid-air. However, the plane crash in which Holly, Valens, and the Big Bopper, was depicted by showing the ill-fated plane taking off and then switching back to Valens' family in California hearing the sad news on the radio. BTW, were any Otis Redding and/or Jim Croce songs deemed "inappropriate"? They also died in plane crashes.
"The Buddy Holly Story" ends at the final concert, and shows some text on the screen about the crash.
He was bad, bad Osama bin Laden Baddest Muslim in the whole damn Afghan Badder than old Saddam Badder than Khomeini was...
Since we're getting absurd, how about banning Marshall Crenshaw songs because he played Buddy Holly in La Bamba?
They did not ban any Big Bopper songs (he died in the same plane crash as Buddy Holly). I didn't see any Jim Croce or Otis Redding on the list.
I heard Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken" at Meijers this evening. Don't know who was playing it, though.
#40> they didn't "ban" *any* songs.
re#42: I've heard that.
Revised version of #40: They did not place any Big Bopper songs on the list that was distributed. (he died in the same plane crash as Buddy Holly). I didn't see any Jim Croce or Otis Redding on the list either.
Re #44: Are there any Big Bopper songs that get regular airplay today?
"regular" might be stretching it a bit, but "Chantilly Lace" still gets play on oldies stations.. my guess is that many of the people programming Clear Channel stations probably don't know enough about music to make the connection..
The overreaction in general over Sept. 11 seems a bit extreme to me. If I may digress from the topic of music for a moment, I work at Toys 'R Us, and the original Planet of the Apes model sets were pulled from the shelves because of the picture of the Statue of Liberty in ruins. Cliff (a co-worker) and I were quite surprised to see that we were eventually putting them back, albeit on an overstock shelf. It doesn't surprise me that some execs or some administrators at Clear Channel contemplated censoring their rotation list. The corporation dominates much of our airwaves here too.
You have several choices: