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Thread started 02/01/13 7:51pm

Gunsnhalen

Old School Oprah Interview About Music Lyrics

Awesome old interview with jello Biafra of one of my favorite bands The Dead Kennedys standing up for N.W.A, Guns N Roses, Iron Maiden, Prince and other artists being seen as ''evil'' at the time.

Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener

All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen

Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce

Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive
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Reply #1 posted 02/02/13 12:17am

Harlepolis

Back when Oprah and her show were interesting. When Phil Donahue went off the air, Oprah lost that fire.

And poor Tipper Gore lol she was in a deep hole being among those pissed off musicians.

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Reply #2 posted 02/02/13 4:51am

Scorp

Harlepolis said:

Back when Oprah and her show were interesting. When Phil Donahue went off the air, Oprah lost that fire.

And poor Tipper Gore lol she was in a deep hole being among those pissed off musicians.

oh, yes, one of the all time most memorable episodes of OPRAH......

THIS is when I use to watch her program, I stopped watching as early as 1993

THIS is when real talk shows existed, and what's funny, her show and talk shows back then were already regressing by this stage as the 1990s arrived....OPRAH was at her absolutely best from 1984-1987

and one of the guests of this show, JUAN WILLIAMS, who's a FOX NEWS political analyst these days, he got ripped to shreds for TELLING THE TRUTH, he criticized how allot of rap music was promoting violence and calling women bitches and hoes...ICE-T (who's been rapping as early as the early 80s) said it shouldn't be taken seriously and that it was all jokes

but see, IT'S NOT ALL JOKES, masogynistic lyrical content has played a profound affect on the minds of youth in males AND females during the last 2 generations plus

see, when the US GOVT allowed explicit lyrical content to be featured in music as long as the record labeles informed parents of the content w/that parental advisory sticker, I knew right there the US GOVT acted with ulterior motive, particularly to facilitate destroying the minds of inner city youth, and the kids ate it alive

advocates for explicit lyric argued that the debate was a censorship issue to justify what they were participating in, when it as an issue of morality and a sense of responsibility

people want to know why music has dropped off the way it has, this dynamic played a profound role in its decline

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Reply #3 posted 02/03/13 12:59am

Gunsnhalen

Here is part 1 of the entire thing...

When ice-T was describing sex tools to the audience looked like they are going to faint lol

Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener

All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen

Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce

Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive
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Reply #4 posted 02/03/13 1:01am

Gunsnhalen

Scorp said:

Harlepolis said:

Back when Oprah and her show were interesting. When Phil Donahue went off the air, Oprah lost that fire.

And poor Tipper Gore lol she was in a deep hole being among those pissed off musicians.

oh, yes, one of the all time most memorable episodes of OPRAH......

THIS is when I use to watch her program, I stopped watching as early as 1993

THIS is when real talk shows existed, and what's funny, her show and talk shows back then were already regressing by this stage as the 1990s arrived....OPRAH was at her absolutely best from 1984-1987

and one of the guests of this show, JUAN WILLIAMS, who's a FOX NEWS political analyst these days, he got ripped to shreds for TELLING THE TRUTH, he criticized how allot of rap music was promoting violence and calling women bitches and hoes...ICE-T (who's been rapping as early as the early 80s) said it shouldn't be taken seriously and that it was all jokes

but see, IT'S NOT ALL JOKES, masogynistic lyrical content has played a profound affect on the minds of youth in males AND females during the last 2 generations plus

see, when the US GOVT allowed explicit lyrical content to be featured in music as long as the record labeles informed parents of the content w/that parental advisory sticker, I knew right there the US GOVT acted with ulterior motive, particularly to facilitate destroying the minds of inner city youth, and the kids ate it alive

advocates for explicit lyric argued that the debate was a censorship issue to justify what they were participating in, when it as an issue of morality and a sense of responsibility

people want to know why music has dropped off the way it has, this dynamic played a profound role in its decline

I can see where you are coming from... and while i can't say lyircs are the reason for this and that.

There is difference in attitudes towards thing's these day's and of course internet, twitter, facebook etc.

Ice-T has a fun personality and doesn't always try to act like a tough goon and is a big softie even at times. The ''pussy money'' talk nowaday's is done with artist's taking what they do way to serious lol

Like they act liek what they talk about is serious business and that is a bit stupid imo.

Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener

All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen

Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce

Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive
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Reply #5 posted 02/03/13 7:41am

Scorp

Gunsnhalen said:

Scorp said:

oh, yes, one of the all time most memorable episodes of OPRAH......

THIS is when I use to watch her program, I stopped watching as early as 1993

THIS is when real talk shows existed, and what's funny, her show and talk shows back then were already regressing by this stage as the 1990s arrived....OPRAH was at her absolutely best from 1984-1987

and one of the guests of this show, JUAN WILLIAMS, who's a FOX NEWS political analyst these days, he got ripped to shreds for TELLING THE TRUTH, he criticized how allot of rap music was promoting violence and calling women bitches and hoes...ICE-T (who's been rapping as early as the early 80s) said it shouldn't be taken seriously and that it was all jokes

but see, IT'S NOT ALL JOKES, masogynistic lyrical content has played a profound affect on the minds of youth in males AND females during the last 2 generations plus

see, when the US GOVT allowed explicit lyrical content to be featured in music as long as the record labeles informed parents of the content w/that parental advisory sticker, I knew right there the US GOVT acted with ulterior motive, particularly to facilitate destroying the minds of inner city youth, and the kids ate it alive

advocates for explicit lyric argued that the debate was a censorship issue to justify what they were participating in, when it as an issue of morality and a sense of responsibility

people want to know why music has dropped off the way it has, this dynamic played a profound role in its decline

I can see where you are coming from... and while i can't say lyircs are the reason for this and that.

There is difference in attitudes towards thing's these day's and of course internet, twitter, facebook etc.

Ice-T has a fun personality and doesn't always try to act like a tough goon and is a big softie even at times. The ''pussy money'' talk nowaday's is done with artist's taking what they do way to serious lol

Like they act liek what they talk about is serious business and that is a bit stupid imo.

everything JUAN WILLIAMS said in this show was right on point

I was 18-19 years old when this show aired

as he said, as of 1990, racism was on the rise and growing worse than lets say 5 years before in 1985

and in 2013, it's worse now than it was in 1990, and allot of the reason why is that artists self perpetuate the problem, and has internalized the conflict, which makes bringing forth solutions that much more difficult

look at someone like TUPAC and BIGGIE, if they never felt they had to project THUG image to establish credibility, the course of their lives would have turned out different, they would still be living, or I should say, they wouldn't have been shot down by the barrel of a gun

explicit lyrical content should have never been allowed to be featured on recordings, that did nothing but open up pandaro's box...but it was deliberate, staged by the US govt itself

and the thing is, TUPAC and BIGGIE and other cats could have made exceptional music all along w/out the explicit content, rap music didn't need profanity to establish credibitliy....HIP-HOP had already existed 12-13 years before explicit lyrical content was allowed....

and this has affected all music, many r&b artists have travelled the same path....even someone like JANET JACKSON has released albums since the 2000s, featuring explicit content, and it accomplished nothing

and the only reason she did it was because so many others were....peer pressure w/in the industry

and just like a lady said who commented in the audience, she said she saw firsthand over time how the explicit lyrics changed her children for the worse

[Edited 2/3/13 8:05am]

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Reply #6 posted 02/03/13 8:40am

MickyDolenz

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Scorp said:

explicit lyrical content should have never been allowed to be featured on recordings, that did nothing but open up pandaro's box...but it was deliberate, staged by the US govt itself

It's been allowed since the beginning of the record business and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to ban it all of a sudden. It would be like Prohibition in the 1920's. It didn't work. Same with the the Hays Code with movies. It didn't really stop some studios from making films with banned content. Hays eventually fell out of favor, partly because of other countries that didn't have the same kind of censorship.

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #7 posted 02/03/13 9:20am

Scorp

MickyDolenz said:

Scorp said:

explicit lyrical content should have never been allowed to be featured on recordings, that did nothing but open up pandaro's box...but it was deliberate, staged by the US govt itself

It's been allowed since the beginning of the record business and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to ban it all of a sudden. It would be like Prohibition in the 1920's. It didn't work. Same with the the Hays Code with movies. It didn't really stop some studios from making films with banned content. Hays eventually fell out of favor, partly because of other countries that didn't have the same kind of censorship.

it aint about censorship, it's about understanding the influence you have as an artist, where your words grow impressionable for millions who are going to emulate what you project

I've seen the devastating effects firsthand in my own community how young cats have projected the stuff they have not only heard in music BUT video as well, they are LIVING it

it's more than about music/entertainment...it's about the long term affects of what's been projected years after these artists move on......

see, cats weren't saggin their pants when HIP-HOP first started in the late 70s

cats started flashin gang signs out the blue....see, these are the things I'm talkin about....

this is what I'm saying.....for me, this is arguably the greatest rap record/any record of all time, it spoke of the ills of the inner city, the challenges people face daily living in such neglected circumstance, BUT the one thing the record did was provide honest depiction w/out perpetuating the circumstance...a record so brutally honest, and so entertaining, but did not feature profanity or destructive content

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY

you see, it could have been the way all along and I would have supported it to the tilt.....

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Reply #8 posted 02/03/13 10:08am

MickyDolenz

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Scorp said:

MickyDolenz said:

It's been allowed since the beginning of the record business and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to ban it all of a sudden. It would be like Prohibition in the 1920's. It didn't work. Same with the the Hays Code with movies. It didn't really stop some studios from making films with banned content. Hays eventually fell out of favor, partly because of other countries that didn't have the same kind of censorship.

it aint about censorship, it's about understanding the influence you have as an artist, where your words grow impressionable for millions who are going to emulate what you project

I've seen the devastating effects firsthand in my own community how young cats have projected the stuff they have not only heard in music BUT video as well, they are LIVING it

it's more than about music/entertainment...it's about the long term affects of what's been projected years after these artists move on......

see, cats weren't saggin their pants when HIP-HOP first started in the late 70s

cats started flashin gang signs out the blue....see, these are the things I'm talkin about....

this is what I'm saying.....for me, this is arguably the greatest rap record/any record of all time, it spoke of the ills of the inner city, the challenges people face daily living in such neglected circumstance, BUT the one thing the record did was provide honest depiction w/out perpetuating the circumstance...a record so brutally honest, and so entertaining, but did not feature profanity or destructive content

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY

you see, it could have been the way all along and I would have supported it to the tilt.....

That's like saying listening to Ozzy Osbourne songs make people commit suicide, which he was taken to court for. Or that heavy metal music turns someone into a Satanist. If someone is going to do something, they were most likely going to do it in the first place. Charles Manson claims that the Beatles white album is about a race war, when there are no songs on the album about that. Gangs were around long before there was a record business, movies, or video games.

As far as "saggin" goes, there was a country/bluegrass singer in the 1950's named Stringbean who wore his pants like that. It's not really new.

People complain about rap music and video games, but not about the news, which has way more violence and bad things going on. People don't protest that the news should only show positive or uplifting stories.

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #9 posted 02/03/13 10:15am

MickyDolenz

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Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance Vs. Judas Priest {1992}

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #10 posted 02/03/13 10:19am

MickyDolenz

avatar

Suit Claiming Ozzy Osbourne Song Led to Suicide Dismissed

December 20, 1986|KIM MURPHY | Times Staff Writer

A lawsuit claiming that rock singer Ozzy Osbourne's music drove an Indio teen-ager to suicide was dismissed Friday by a judge who said the suit "reads more like a novel than a legal pleading."

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John L. Cole rejected assertions that hidden lyrics in the song, "Suicide Solution," which purportedly urge listeners to "Get the gun and try it, shoot, shoot, shoot," exempt the recording from normal constitutional protections.

"We have to look very closely at the First Amendment and the chilling effect that would be had if these words were held to be accountable," Cole said.

Thomas Anderson, attorney for the parents of 19-year-old John McCollum, who shot himself in the head Oct. 26, 1984, said he would appeal Cole's dismissal ruling.

"There is no redeeming quality to these lyrics," he said. "I think this case will be heard by a jury, and when they do, Ozzy Osbourne and CBS Records will be in deep trouble."

Attorneys for CBS argued that Osbourne could not be held any more responsible for his listeners' responses than could Shakespeare for Hamlet's soliloquy, Tolstoy for Anna Karenina throwing herself under the wheels of a train or the producers of the movie "M.A.S.H." for its theme song, "Suicide Is Painless."

"If CBS and Ozzy Osbourne are held civilly liable for what is on those records, then all the rest of those works are at risk," CBS attorney William Vaughn said.

"Certainly, John McCollum was a most unfortunate young man" who may have been "particularly susceptible . . . and troubled," Vaughn acknowledged. "Does that mean that every writer is going to have to write to the lowest common denominator so as not to disturb even the most susceptible of us?"

At issue Friday was not whether the hidden lyrics really exist or whether McCollum listened to them repeatedly before shooting himself in the head with his father's gun, but whether such lyrics are protected as a matter of law under the Constitution.

The courts have traditionally held that the First Amendment's free expression guarantees are restricted when others may be harmed.

The measuring stick most often applied is whether the words are intended to incite "specific, immediate action" and are directed at a particular, identifiable group.

One of the few cases in which the First Amendment was found not to provide absolute protection involved radio disc jockey The Real Don Steele and his broadcast appeal to listeners to hurry to a certain destination in Los Angeles to win a prize.

A motorist who was injured in the subsequent traffic fiasco sued the radio station and won. The California Supreme Court upheld the award in 1975, noting that the disc jockey had continued his broadcasts even after witnessing cars careening through traffic to reach the prize.

But a state appellate court ruled in 1981 that the family of a 9-year-old girl raped with a foreign object by an assailant who had recently seen a similar attack depicted in the NBC movie "Born Innocent" was not entitled to damages. In that case, the court held that the network was not "urging listeners to act in an inherently dangerous manner."

Ozzy Court Case

Anderson argued that Osbourne is a cult figure who has developed a "special relationship of kinship" with his audience through his driving rhythms and first-person lyrics and thus is able to incite certain vulnerable listeners to respond to his music.

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #11 posted 02/03/13 11:22am

Scorp

MickyDolenz said:

Scorp said:

it aint about censorship, it's about understanding the influence you have as an artist, where your words grow impressionable for millions who are going to emulate what you project

I've seen the devastating effects firsthand in my own community how young cats have projected the stuff they have not only heard in music BUT video as well, they are LIVING it

it's more than about music/entertainment...it's about the long term affects of what's been projected years after these artists move on......

see, cats weren't saggin their pants when HIP-HOP first started in the late 70s

cats started flashin gang signs out the blue....see, these are the things I'm talkin about....

this is what I'm saying.....for me, this is arguably the greatest rap record/any record of all time, it spoke of the ills of the inner city, the challenges people face daily living in such neglected circumstance, BUT the one thing the record did was provide honest depiction w/out perpetuating the circumstance...a record so brutally honest, and so entertaining, but did not feature profanity or destructive content

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY

you see, it could have been the way all along and I would have supported it to the tilt.....

That's like saying listening to Ozzy Osbourne songs make people commit suicide, which he was taken to court for. Or that heavy metal music turns someone into a Satanist. If someone is going to do something, they were most likely going to do it in the first place. Charles Manson claims that the Beatles white album is about a race war, when there are no songs on the album about that. Gangs were around long before there was a record business, movies, or video games.

As far as "saggin" goes, there was a country/bluegrass singer in the 1950's named Stringbean who wore his pants like that. It's not really new.

People complain about rap music and video games, but not about the news, which has way more violence and bad things going on. People don't protest that the news should only show positive or uplifting stories.

this is why I brought up the subject of self perpetuating behavior

yes, gangs existed....Afrika Bambaataa used to be in the Black Spades back in the mid 70s

I was in small neighborhood gangs, almost joined this major gang called the junior disciples back in 1981, which was a branch from the Original Disciples who started in Chicago back in the 1960s

gangs existed due to socio-economic factors (lack of quality education, lack of jobs, lack of overall fair opportunity, jim crow, defacto segragation).....

but see, the original Crips and Bloods were formed not to fight against each other, but to protect the neighborhoods from police brutality after the Watts riots of 1965 as the civil righs era reached prominence

as as 1979 hit, when the tide began to turn, when the crips and bloods wanted to form a truce to gravitate back to it's original mode of existence, LAPD obstructed that effort and encouraged even more gang violence, then the crack epidemic started, then the proliferation of gun use...

ALL OF THAT was being projected in many music videso of the late 80s/up until the 90s and beyond, and those images grew impressionable on youth who were not aware the root of the circumstance, which led to a round of self perpetuation that has not inflicted not only one generations, but 2 and half generations...

and u pointed out one person who "sagged" back in the 50s, but

1.) I'm sure it wasn't called saggin

2.) you didn't see host of kids in each urban community in the country emulating that look

but that has played out since the late 1980s, and grows deeply ingrained in the psyche of the community, and its' not only guys who are saggin now, it's young ladies who are sporting the sag look......and why are they doing it?....not because they are born with that mindset, it's because what has been projected to them thru music and video,

so by the 90s, you had a situation where you had teenagers, who had no part of the actual gang experience emulate this image, especially when THUG LIFE became the M.O., then you had kids who didn't even live in the inner city trying to adapt to the scene, all because of what was projected to them......these cats were deemed as fake and called WANKSTAS trying to be REAL G'S.

and because of this depiction, allot of teenagers AND grown folks have died as a result....THUG LIFE image cost TUPAC and BIGGIE their lives, and I bet anyone TUPAC's range as an artist and human being was more profound than what he initially projected, an image he was trying to move beyond but the image wouldn't allow him.....

and if we are talented as we claim to be, we wouldn't have to resort to using profanity in records to get attention or to sell records, for that level of discourse eventually dries out creativity and leaves you with no voice to express what really needs to be expressed....and that's why music, particularly black music has withered in the manner and ferocity it has

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Reply #12 posted 02/03/13 5:46pm

MickyDolenz

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1931 1965

1933 1953

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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