A rchive Date
[ 19-01-2003 ]
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[ International Relations ]
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[ Mass Media ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoShowbiz/ts.ts-01-19-0075.html
Highway to Hell?
We trace music's devolvement into moral turpitude
By JOHN KRYK, EXECUTIVE ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
Sunday, January 19, 2003
How low can they go? How low can the moral standards of popular music plummet?
Moralists 'round the world have been asking that since Elvis Presley's first hip gyration on national TV in 1955.
But, hey, you gotta give Elvis The Pelvis credit. He and his handlers got it exactly right at the outset of the rock/pop boom, all those decades ago: The surefire recipe for superstardom is not only producing great music for the high school crowd, but outraging moms and dads in the process.
In short, you gotta shock as well as rock.
That lesson has not been lost on waves of subsequent rockers, rappers, DJs, and artists of every other conceivable genre.
In short, every time the Perry Como crowd gasped in horror - or even just tsk-tsked - well, you knew some act was soon going to be all the rage.
For those who don't recall him, Como was the poster boy of such abominably safe, smiley pap as Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom) that pervaded Cold War America before the dawn of rock and roll. You know, the only stuff Ward Cleaver would allow the Beav to play on the turntable.
Contrast Como with t.A.T.u.
Have you heard of the dance-pop duo yet? Hoo-boy. They're female. They're teenagers. They're Russian. And they're taking Europe by storm.
Oh, and one other thing. They're passionate lovers - at least that's what they're leading the public to believe, and in public they're as shy about it as Christina Aguilera standing naked in an NFL locker room.
Indeed, t.A.T.u.'s pseudo-kiddie-porn stage act and videos are causing quite a little scandal overseas - and so too will they here, if their English-language CD sells well in North America.
The duo - 18-year-old Lena Katina and 17-year-old Julia Volkova - not only partake unabashedly in sensual kissing, they reportedly even do a little undressing of each other during concerts, all in their trademark schoolgirl uniforms (tight blouses and short-short skirts, natch).
Outraged? Read on. A wee bit more barrier-smashing has gone down in the 48-year gulf between Elvis and t.A.T.u.
CHILD BRIDE MIX-UP MAY HAVE CUT JERRY'S TOUR
1955 Perry Como shocks absolutely no one with his Songs Of Faith album.
1956 Elvis Presley, a young, cool, hip-shaking practitioner of the newly named "rock and roll" music, makes his U.S. network TV debut on Milton Berle's show on Tuesday, June 6. Newspapers instantly decry Presley's "obscene performance." Ben Gross of the New York Daily News suggests that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the grunt-and-groin antics of one Elvis Presley."
Ohhh, we hope you stayed tuned, Ben.
1957 Jerry Lee Lewis marries his 13-year-old cousin, Myra Lewis. At first the hard-living, zany piano rocker keeps it a secret. But his career instantly goes into the tank once "CHILD BRIDE" headlines top newspapers in North America and Europe.
1959 A U.S. radio network, Mutual Broadcasting System, drops all rock and roll records from its play-lists, calling it "distorted, monotonous, noisy music."
Late '50s, Early '60s The Honorary Sons of Como - Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vee, Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Dion and Neil Sedaka - all dispense a most vile brand of safe teen pap.
1962 A New York Bishop forbids Catholic school students from dancing to Chubby Checker's sensation The Twist, saying R&B music, and its associated dances, are "lewd and un-Christian."
1964 The Beatles lead the way as the British Invasion takes North America by storm, steering pop music in a fab new direction. Visually, however, the Beatles outrage millions in the age of crewcuts, what with their outrageously long hair for the time.
1965 While the Beatles are marketed and accepted as loveable, wise-cracking innocents, their Brit arch-rivals The Rolling Stones wholly embrace their rougher, cruder image. Especially in 1965.
When three of them are arrested for urinating on a gas station wall, guitarist Brian Jones says, "We piss anywhere, man." Their concerts induce far more violence than The Beatles', and Cleveland mayor Ralph Locher bans rock concerts in his city after a Stones show. Some radio stations ban the monster hit Satisfaction for one suggestive lyric: "When I'm doing this, and I'm singing that, and I'm trying to make some girl" - as in "trying to make some girl pregnant." When newspapers ask, "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" fathers answer in unison, "No."
1966 After being asked in an interview about the waning importance of religion in young peoples' lives, the Beatles' John Lennon says his group is "more popular than Jesus." A massive campaign is begun by outraged Christians, especially in the southern U.S., to burn Beatles albums and collectibles. An international scandal is born.
1966, '67 Gone are the days of sly references to drug-taking in song lyrics. Bob Dylan boldly sings "everybody must get stoned" in Rainy Day Women #12 & 35. Jefferson Airplane encourages listeners to "feed your head" in White Rabbit. Then there are The Doors. When asked by producers of The Ed Sullivan Show not to sing the lyric "girl we couldn't get much higher" in Light My Fire, front-man Jim Morrison agrees - then proceeds to sing it with all the more vigour when cameras roll. The Doors are never invited back.
1968 Drunken Jim Morrison is arrested for an "indecent and immoral exhibition" at a Doors concert in New Haven, Conn., in which he both uses profanity on stage (Ooooooh!) and baits police (well, okay). A year later, in Miami, he is arrested for allegedly exposing his penis on stage and, eventually, is found guilty of profanity and indecent exposure. Meanwhile, in Paris, John Lennon and new wife Yoko Ono aren't arrested when both pose naked for the world's paparazzi, although when one such photo adorns the cover of Ono's subsequent Two Virgins album (right), New York police seize 30,000 copies.
1969 Recipe for disaster? Hmmm. You be the judge.
The Stones, in their attempt to eclipse the famous, massive, outdoor "peace and love" Woodstock concert earlier in the year, plan and stage within 48 hours a free concert at the Altamont raceway in northern California (left). The Stones hire the Hells Angels biker gang to act as security. The Hells are paid in advance with beer. Result? The Hells smash myriad skulls with pool cues. Final scorecard: Four deaths, countless injuries, three births, and countless overdoses. Here endeth the '60s.
1969-71 The piper comes a-callin'. The Stones' Brian Jones drowns in his pool; Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix die of drug overdoses; Jim Morrison, who likely drank himself to death, dies in Paris; Duane Allman is killed in a motorcycle crash.
1972 David Bowie and Brit band T. Rex are at the vanguard of the Brit "glam rock" period, which melds accessible pop with sexual ambiguity.
Early '70s Led Zeppelin. Live shark. Naked groupie. Seattle hotel room. You figure out the rest. Right there, 1970s rock-star decadence reached its zenith. (Runners-up: Mick Jagger humping enormous inflatable phallus on stage; The Who, whose penchant for trashing hotel rooms is eclipsed only by their penchant for trashing their own instruments on stage; Aerosmith, Eric Clapton and other whacked-out, smacked-out, boozed-up artists who made "rehab" a household word.
1974 A 13-year-old boy from Calgary hangs himself during a deadly mimic of Alice Cooper's stage show. Cooper drops the mock hanging from his act. The singer - who once threw a live chicken into a crowd in Toronto, whereupon the bird was promptly ripped to shreds - does not exactly turn into Mr. Nice Guy. He releases his Alice Cooper Goes To Hell album two years later.
1977 The punk movement is spawned in New York as the antithesis of all rock had become: "Boring old farts" spending their millions on lavish lifestyles, private tour jets, and artwork for their self-indulgent five-song double albums. Punk - comprising 90% anger, 10% music - explodes in England after The Ramones play in London. Soon, The Sex Pistols - led by Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious - are toasting the Silver Jubilee with their own outrageous version of God Save The Queen.
1977 Longtime heroin addict Keith Richards is nabbed in Toronto with so much smack he's charged with trafficking. For a while it looks like the Stone faces substantial jail time, but a judge suspends Richards' sentence as long as he performs a benefit concert for the blind (in Oshawa) and continues rehab.
1978-79 The scourge of modern music, disco, reigns. Saturday Night Fever is an epidemic. Donna Summer loves to love ya, baby. The Bee Gees bungee to super-stardom. And while Gloria Gaynor survives, disco - ultimately, thankfully - does not. That makes the Rev. Jesse Jackson happy, who in his ceaseless quest for publicity had called for bans against disco music, saying it promotes promiscuity and drug use.
1981 Two Utah radio stations ban Olivia Newton John's - OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN'S! - hit single Physical, arguing the lyrics ("Let me hear your body talk") don't jibe with Mormon values.
1981 The MTV generation quickly embraces the "video" (nee: promotional film) as a vital means of discovering music acts. Some bands instantly go over the top, such as little-known Brits Duran Duran, who produce in essence a soft-porn video (bodacious babes mud-wrestling, etc.) for their song, Girls On Film. MTV bans it.
1982 Ozzy Osbourne - the former leadman of Black Sabbath, and who along with Judas Priest has succeeded the Stones and Alice Cooper as contrived, perceived agents of Lucifer - is arrested for urinating on the Alamo, a national U.S. monument. San Antonio, Tex., forbids him from ever playing there again. Three years later, Osbourne is sued by the parents of a teen who claim their son was encouraged to commit suicide by Ozzy's song Suicide Solution. Ozzy is cleared by the courts. The next year (yes, it's true), he famously bites the head off a bat thrown on stage by a fan, thinking it was a fake.
1984 The music industry unsuccessfully attempts to make punk marketable. Ergo, the microscopic dent made by one of the most sexually offensive bands of all time, the mohawk-wearing Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics - authors of such songs as F*** And Roll, F*** That Booty and The Humpty Song.
1985 Frank Zappa delivers the most sensible oratory ever heard on Capitol Hill when he takes on Tipper Gore and her cadre of prudish zealots in the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center). Gore and her merry band of censors were no match for Zappa, Dee Snider and John Denver (!) during the congressional hearings. Alas, advisory stickers on albums today can be traced to Mrs. Goody-Two-Shoes, last seen with Al's tongue down her throat at the 2000 Democratic convention.
1984-86 Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone launches an impressive bid to be forever remembered as the Godmother of Pop Music Trollopry. Her video for Like A Virgin ("touched for the very first time" - not autobiographical) is banned by MTV.
Mid '80s Small children, tone-deaf grandparents and others who don't know any better enjoy most of the acts that stroll through what soon would be remembered as the waste-ground of modern music: Phil Collins, We Are The World, Hall & Oates, Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, Thompson Twins, a-ha, Duran Duran, Wham!, Lionel Ritchie ... need we go on?
But the most abhorrent of all pop collaborations - and, indeed, the nadir of the pop/rock genre as we know it - occurs when Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney warble their abomination, The Girl Is Mine. Not just any girl, mind you, but "the DOG-GONE girl is mine." And then they have the gall to speak to each other just before the fadeout of their little ditty. PAUL: "Michael, we're not going to fight about this, okay?" MICHAEL: "I think I told you, I'm a lover, not a fighter" ... ad nauseum. Ozzy couldn't have caused as many suicides if he tried.
1987 Radio stations ban George Michael's new song I Want Your Sex, and many TV networks ban the video.
1989 The group 2 Live Crew blazes a new trail for rap music: profanity-laced and violence-endorsing "gangsta"rap. Their third album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, features song titles such as Me So Horny, Bad Ass Bitch, The F***Shop and Get The F***Out Of My House. The CD is deemed legally obscene in Miami and hence forbidden. The U.S. Supreme Court later decides that the state ruling infringes freedom of speech.
1989-92 Now continually outdoing herself, reinventing herself and doing gawd-only-knows-what-else to herself, Madonna sets new standards for slatterns everywhere. Her videos for Like A Prayer and Justify My Love are banned. The 1991 theatrical film of her Blonde Ambition tour shows her to be the moral sewer she wants so desperately to be seen as, while her 1992 wrapped-in-Mylar book Sex is roundly condemned for its nude photos of her and others.
1992 Nothing compares to bald Irish popster Sinead O'Connor ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II and throwing it on the floor - as a protest against the Catholic Church's stance on abortion - during a taping of Saturday Night Live.
1992 With police associations across America protesting him, and amid intense media pressure, gangsta rapper Ice T finally drops the song Cop Killer from his Body Count CD, which had other tracks titled KKK Bitch, Bowels Of The Devil and, worse than that (brace yourself), Oprah.
1993 A 13-year-old boy alleges Michael Jackson sexually abused him at Jackson's "Neverland" ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif. Police are called in. Peter Pan later settles with the boy's family for $20 million, and the criminal investigation is dropped.
1994 The era of grunge, which revitalized rock music, comes crashing down when Nirvana's frontman Kurt Cobain kills himself with a shotgun.
1996 Tupac Shakur is shot dead, allegedly by a rival gangsta rapper gang. A year later, rapper The Notorious B.I.G. is similarly shot dead - some suspect as retribution in an intensifying American east-coast/west-coast hip-hop rivalry.
1997 Prodigy - a male solo artist with the appearance of a balding Cyndi Lauper with finger in electric socket - sends feminists into a tizzy with his song Smack My Bitch Up.
1999 Woodstock '99. Thirty years earlier? Peace and love and joy. This time? Overcrowding, price-gouging, rioting, arson and theft. Joan Baez is not impressed.
2000 Omnipresent teen pop sensation Britney Spears skanks it up 24/7, baring nearly all in virtually every video, concert or public appearance. She makes her career-orchestrating mom proud, if no one else.
2001 Eminem brings a new level of anger and creativity to rap. He's labelled as anti-gay, racist, misogynist ... basically, anti-everything. Many of his profanity-laced and offensive songs are banned - or at least bleep-filled - on radio and TV.
2002 Former teen pop starlet Christina Aguilera, Britney's old rival, picks up where Madonna left off, trolling the sewers of extreme sexual bad taste to catch a shocking new persona and look. Extremely unlike a virgin.
2003 The Russian teen duo t.A.t.u. - featuring Julia and Lena (left) - tears down more walls with their European hit song All The Things She Said (the story of a love affair between two young girls) and accompanying provocative video. Even more scandalous is their stage act, in which they purportedly remove each other's clothes.
Has pop music finally reached its lowest depths with these grunt-and-groin antics? Don't bet on it.
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