Taboo Tunes
by Peter Blecha
(Backbeat) $17.95
Music may not seem the most potent weapon in the '00s, but throughout history, as documented in the new book Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Books and Censored Songs, songs with a social conscience--like the Industrial Workers of the World's (IWW) radical folk tunes and the Dead Kennedys' biting satirical numbers--have been viciously attacked by the government, which perceived them as real threats. (IWW singer Joe Hill, who wrote "There Is Power in a Union," was executed after being convicted in a very questionable murder case.) One of censorship's worst casualties was singer-actor Paul Robeson, who had his passport revoked and his career eventually ruined for being one of the few African-American performers who dared to speak his mind in the late '40s.
Along with the idealists and high-minded folk who've caught flak for their beliefs are the thousands of musicians who've written songs about the joy of smokin' reefer, being naked and horny, or their often phony allegiance to Satan. These artists have also been arrested, prosecuted, and banned from the radio.
Peter Blecha, a local music historian who has written for Vintage Guitar, Life, and the Rocket, has organized his very comprehensive history of music censorship according to topic: sex, drugs, murder, etc., so the reader must traipse through the folk era and the Reagan years more than once. Blecha is also partial to very long, though impressive, lists of songs in various categories, such as dirty blues tunes ("Let Me Play with Your Poodle," "Doodle Hole Blues," and "Somebody's Diggin' My Potatoes") and anti-Reagan punk anthems ("Bonzo Goes to Bitburg," "Reagan Der Fuhrer," and "Who We Hatin' Now, Mr. Reagan?").
Virtually every act of censorship is covered and many of these stories of suppression and wrongful discrimination will perturb the reader. Others, especially those from the first half of the last century, seem preposterous now.
For example, as Blecha explains, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was the oh so risqué waltz that had the fuddy-duddies fuming. Later, popular animal-named dances like the kangaroo hop, the lame duck, the grizzly bear, and the boll weevil wiggle were outlawed--perhaps successfully since you don't see anyone doing those dances anymore. When jazz first arrived, it was a favorite target of racists who called it "jungle music" and tried to associate it with "cannibalistic voodoo rites." The '50s was a particularly grand era for censors, who managed to ban Link Wray's "Rumble," which was an instrumental. "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen sparked a two-year FBI investigation into its supposedly raunchy lyrics. The song was eventually exonerated. But few songs pissed off authorities as much as "Cop Killer" from Ice-T's rock band/side project Body Count. Ice-T's kids were pulled from school for interrogation, he was notified that his finances would be audited by the IRS, and he was eventually intimidated into removing the song from the Body Count record.
Although his historical knowledge is comprehensive, Blecha includes too many examples of nutso Christians spouting off about the evils of rock 'n' roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Just a few would be sufficient. He also inserts too many uncontroversial personal opinions, mostly about censors being bad guys--the majority of readers will agree with him on that. But his research is topnotch and it's the various historical anecdotes that make the book a pleasant read, even if they're not so relevant to the present.
However bad censorship may seem in America, Blecha points out that it's worse in most other parts of the world. Japan's initial reaction to the rock 'n' roll invasion was to cancel tours by threatening bands like the Beach Boys, raid dances, ban long-haired groups from the radio, and expel students listening to music it deemed dangerous. President Sukarno of Indonesia banned Beatlemania because it was "a form of mental disease." But nobody went as far as those nutty Taliban dudes (angered perhaps because they believed they were referenced in the famous Harry Belafonte song "Banana Boat [Day-O]"). The Taliban's restrictions banned caged birds, made even the act of humming risky, and caused Afghan music fans to bury their record collections in their backyards.
More common in the U.S., Blecha has discovered, is self-censorship, where musicians face the loss of revenue or the wrath of their record companies if they don't change their songs--a pressure that, unfortunately, continues with acts today who want to sell their CDs to certain stores or have their videos shown on music channels.
