Average Jane Wants Her Rock Music Uncensored

Written by

As you might know, we're in the process of looking for a new drummer for our rock cover band. (Actually, we might have found one, but that's a story for later.)

The other day I overheard my husband's speaker phone call with one of the guys who answered our Craigslist ad. When he got to the standard question about whether the drummer liked the material we're doing, the guy said, "Actually, I'm uncomfortable with the language in some of your songs like 'Highway to Hell' and 'Hair of the Dog,'" (which contains the line, "Now you're messin' with a son-of-a-bitch").

I walked out of my office, made eye contact with my husband and shook my head to indicate that he didn't need to bother to book an audition with that one. Imagine how the delicate flower would have reacted when we got to one of the songs with the word "fuck" in it. And he wasn't even going to be the one singing the lyrics!

Rock music is about rebellion and rule-breaking. I may be a 40-something with a desk job, but when I'm singing with my band, I'm still the 17-year-old who used to piss off her mom by cranking up her Rush records all evening long. We're playing this stuff in bars, not kindergartens.

Which brings me to another of my pet peeves: the bleeping of songs on the radio. Even classic rock songs that escaped unexpurgated for 30 or more years (like "Who Are You" by The Who, for example), have now been neutered for broadcast. Yesterday I heard "Life in the Fast Lane" by the Eagles on the radio and the entire line "haven't seen a goddamned thing" was just crudely removed from the song, making it skip at that spot. Who are we protecting here? Does the classic rock station really have that many elementary school listeners in its demographic?

Back in the heyday of the PMRC, I wore a t-shirt with their silly warning label printed on it when my band played. Then and now, I thought that music censorship was stupid and wrong. But even back then they didn't try to completely sanitize the airwaves.

Am I going to play a Buckcherry song in front of children? No. And parents can easily wait to listen to the hard rock station in the car until they've dropped off their kids. But I'm against infantilizing the entire populace because a few people get the vapors over the occasional "bad word" in popular entertainment.

My iTunes collection is liberally bedecked with red "Explicit" labels because I automatically buy the songs in the version the artists originally intended. Because music is art and art – like it or not – is about unfettered expression. So let's all just grow up and keep that in mind.

Comments

12 responses to “Average Jane Wants Her Rock Music Uncensored”

March 11, 2009

May

I TOTALLY AGREE! Why the fuck are adults pandering to children when we are the majority and way more important to society at this point than the damn kids? Since when did the existence of kids mean that we all have to sanitize life to be PG? It’s totally ridiculous.

Reply
March 11, 2009

Jenny Meade

I have only a slight argument. Mostly I hate censorship, and I especially hate someone else making the decision as to what I can and can’t let my kids listen to. I’m pretty capable of that. But the thing is, I never wanted to listen to the freaking Wiggles in the car. I want to listen to real music. I want my kids to be exposed to REAL music, real beats, real talent. We’ve been playing Johnny Cash and The Beastie Boys in my rockin’ out minivan since the boys were little. And they love it. Drew especially likes Green Day. Most of the time, they don’t actually catch the language anyway. But. BUT. Sometimes they do. I can tell them a bad word should not be repeated or consequences will be had, and they’ll buy that. But there are somethings that they do catch that have to be explained, and I don’t always know or remember that it’s in there. So sometimes I appreciate that a song can be enjoyed in a radio edit version without the language, and my kids can listen to real music without getting caught up in the fact that there’s a bad word there, or, even worse, the occasional misogynist lyric that catches their attention.
My point is, I guess, that I appreciate when bands like Green Day authorize and put out radio edit versions of their songs, to make them more appropriate, especially when the use of the language isn’t necessary for the song anyway.

Reply
March 11, 2009

Average Jane

Jenny – I take your point about wanting to share music with kids. However, think about the books and movies that kids can’t see until they’re old enough. (And I speak as someone whose parents insisted on vetting all PG movies before we were allowed to see them – including Star Wars). It’s not the end of the world to have to wait for some things.

Reply
March 11, 2009

cagey

Mommy of the Year over here doesn’t really care if her kids hear a few curse words or two. Not yet. Maybe someday, I will. Eh. Whatever.
Although, when buying music, I do purchase the non-explicit version. Because that Akon guy? I love his music, but the MOUTH on that boy? Even makes my own ears ring a bit.

Reply
March 11, 2009

Jenny Meade

Cagey – Fist bump, girl, I hear ya. Sometimes it’s not the bad words I’m afraid of – it’s Shaggy singing “girl, I wanna make you all moist and wet…” AAAGHHH I don’t want to talk about that yet. (And that one was on a mix CD my husband made especially FOR the kids. He hadn’t really been paying attention to the words, he said. Well then, you can have that little talk all by yourself when it comes up, dude. 🙂

Reply
March 11, 2009

lizriz

Amen. I definitely always buy the uncensored albums on iTunes!

Reply
March 11, 2009

Goofy Girl

AGREED! This is why I have Sirius radio in my car. I hear all the “fuck”s, “damn”s, and “hell”s that I care to. And mostly I know where they are in the songs, so if the kidlings’ ears are in range, I sing another word really loud at the appropriate moment, or just turn the volume down a tad.
Mostly they ignore “Mommy’s music” anyway, so it’s a non-issue.
ROCK ON UNCENSORED!!!!!

Reply
March 11, 2009

Kim

This so reminds me of the time that I was listening to the Dead Milkmen in my room, approximately 12 years old, when my parents heard the words to “VFW” through the door… to their credit they didn’t take the cassette away, they merely asked me never to listen to that song again. As if!!
Of course to this day I haven’t developed a thing for Suicidal Tendencies because my father caught me at the record store with it and there mere band name was enough to make him humiliate me and put it back. (So I listened to Metallica’s Fade To Black an extra 1,000 times?)
Personally, the least I can hope for if I ever have kids is that they feel comfortable enough to talk to me about whatever they hear! They’re going to hear it. One way or the other.

Reply
March 11, 2009

Dorothy’s Husband

You ladies and your fucking foul language… I got outed in the little one’s daycare this past January when our daughter told her teachers that her Dad was going to a rock concert (AC/DC) and came to school the next day with said teachers giving me sheepish grins and the look of “Wow, we really don’t know you, do we?” I laughed knowing if they realized that when I throw my kid in the car and here “Turn it up loud, Daddy!” from the back seat, with head bobbing to Nickleback on the rock station, they would probably say the same thing about her! We don’t make a big deal of it if a song comes up on iTunes and one or two slip. I don’t buy the CLEAN versions for her pleasure and I’m not going to make my choices of what I want based on covering my kids ears every second. Call me a bad Dad, but I also am realistic that by the time she’s 10, she’ll have heard them all anyway. We’ve let ourselves slip a few times around the house and at that point, correct the situation. She knows when she hears things she shouldn’t and usually reminds us. But if its in music or even watching HBO and we don’t hit the mute button fast enough, well, she’s not paying that much attention to it anyway. Luckily she didn’t develop a habit of repeating everything, but even if she did – and thankyoulordjesusforshortmemories – if the worse thing in the world she learned was a cuss word, I’m going to count ALL of my blessings. Some day I’m going to mix her Backyardigans songs with Disturbed. Be damned, Captain & Tenille…

Reply
March 12, 2009

zen zone chick

I’m on the fence here…I listen to all kinds of crap when I’m alone that I don’t let the kids listen to, but imagine my surprise when I attended a ‘dance’ at my daugher’s elementary school and they are playing Soulja Boy/Superman (gonna super-soak that ‘ho) and ‘Get Low’ which also refers to women as hos, and references drugs, alcohol and sex. Did 85% of the kids know those songs? Yep. Do I own them? Yep. Are they appropriate for Kindergartens? Uh, no…. and I’m NOT a prude at all, and agree it’s up to parents to censor to a large part, but you can’t ‘parental block’ a radio station when you’re not around. I dunno…..I guess I’m gonna have to perch on the fence for this one!

Reply
March 16, 2009

logtar

My brain is going pretty fast right now with this topic, I think you are onto something a lot larger that I might have to explore further.

Reply
March 17, 2009

Nuke

I apologize for not catching this in a more timely manner.
I remember Tipper Gore and Dee Snyder before Congress. I remember the Parental Advisory stickers showing up in stores. I didn’t listen to anything to “racey” back then but I felt the same then as now.
I am OK with an advisory IF the parents actually review the material to see if it is appropriate for their kids. If they use it as a reason to automatically reject the music, that’s lazy parenting. In the long run parents need to choose, but they need to choose based on knowledge not just fear.
As for censorship, I won’t even buy music from places that only offer “sanitized” versions (lookin at you Walmart). I used to work at a store similar to K-mart. I bought their only copy of Jacky’s first album because it was Parental Advisory and the music Mgr wasn’t going to put it out. I mean I had heard and liked a song from it, but the fact that she decided for the community made me act. Same with Body Count, got em out of the returns bin in the storeroom and took em straight home.
I could ramble on forever, but I’ll close by sayin Rock the fuck on AJ!

Reply