Spokane Spokesman-Review, May 27, 1979: Difference between revisions
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Now I'm not paranoid enough to hear coming out of my stereo speakers, but some recent developments speak ill for rock and roll's current relationship to matters of race and religion. The gamut runs from New Wave hero Elvis Costello to the lesser lights of the punk scene. From the utterances of some white rock fans to Frank Zappa's ugly ode to a "Jewish Princess," to punk bands coming on like Hitler's children. | Now I'm not paranoid enough to hear coming out of my stereo speakers, but some recent developments speak ill for rock and roll's current relationship to matters of race and religion. The gamut runs from New Wave hero Elvis Costello to the lesser lights of the punk scene. From the utterances of some white rock fans to Frank Zappa's ugly ode to a "Jewish Princess," to punk bands coming on like Hitler's children. | ||
The best-publicized incident concerns the rock and roll tag-team match that took place in Columbus, Ohio, in late March. In one corner was singer-gultarist-Buddy Holly-look-alike Costello and his entourage. Singer Bonnie Bramlett, guitarist Stephen Stills and some compadres held down the other. The festivities began when a drunken Costello punctuated his remarks by | The best-publicized incident concerns the rock and roll tag-team match that took place in Columbus, Ohio, in late March. In one corner was singer-gultarist-Buddy Holly-look-alike Costello and his entourage. Singer Bonnie Bramlett, guitarist Stephen Stills and some compadres held down the other. The festivities began when a drunken Costello punctuated his remarks by running down James Brown as "a jive-ass nigger" and Ray Charles as "nothing but a blind, ignorant, nigger." | ||
Reportedly, the immediate debate concluded with some good right hands and feet from Bramlett. But word spread and Costello received death threats and enough critical brickbats to encourage him to meet the press in New York. | |||
Costello told the rock scribes that he'd shot his mouth off simply to get rid of Bramlett and the others. "It became necessary to outrage these people with the most offensive and obnoxious remarks I could muster." One thing in Costello's favor: He knows "offensive and obnoxious remarks" when he hears - or says - them. | |||
Costello's manager, Jake Riviera, correctly labeled the incident "a drunken barroom idiocy." But what makes Costello's remarks more than just inebriated ranting is that they seem to have company. | |||
Last summer, the Rolling Stones outraged many people with their now-famous remark about the all-night sexual proclivities of "black girls." At least the stereotype in "Some Girls" was tempered a bit by the next, less-quoted line, in which Mick Jagger lamented his own inability to rise to the occasion. And "Some Girls" was more sexist than racist, another chapter in the same book. | |||
But what were we to make of punk dean Lou Reed's mean-spirited ditty, "I Want To Be Black," from his last live album? Reed defended his casual references to "niggers," Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, but saying he was actually satirizing " - up Jewish college students" who want to be hiply black. Great consolation; when somebody in the audience called him on his "dirty Jew jokes," he cursed them out. | |||
"I never said I was tasteful," Reed continued. | |||
Writing in the current issue of the Village Voice, critic Lester Bangs discussed rock's intentional and unintentional racism. Bangs, who cares about New Wave music, is angered that Nico, the former icy lead singer with Reed's legendary Velvet Underground, sang "Deutschland uber Allies" at a New York punk club and then explained her departure from her former record company to New Wave Rock magazine thusly: "I said to some interviewer that I didn't like Negroes.... They took it personally... although it's a whole different race. I mean Bob Marley doesn't resemble a Negro does he? ... I don't like the features. They're so much like animals ... It's cannibals, no?" | |||
Bangs also mentions punk legend Iggy Stooge's introduction from his "Metallic K.P.": "Our next selection tonight for all you Hebrew ladies in the audience is entitled "Rich Bitch." (Is this why "the Ig" chose to live in Berlin?) And Bangs fires both barrels at the offhanded tribute rendered in a Florida punk magazine by one Miriam Linna, whose estimable musical career has included stints with such musical giants as the Cramps, Nervus Rex and Zantees. | |||
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Revision as of 23:06, 6 September 2016
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