Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Rolling Stones' Castigation

It's strange that the United States has no trouble participating in wars, seeing countless scenes of violence on television, but yet some of the country can't stomach certain "bad" words in a rock song. The Rolling Stones played at half-time at this year's Superbowl, and they were told by the National Football League officals that they had to censure the songs "Start Me Up" and "Rough Justice" because apparently some of the lyrics were "too sexually explicit" (what is exactly too explicit?) to be broadcasted. The Stones first did agree to censure those songs but then decided later that it was "completely unnecessary" to cut the lyrics to those songs. So, what were the officials forced to do? Well, cut the sound during those "unappriopriate" lyrics. Maybe that's why the sound was so crappy for the duration of their short concert.
The cut lyrics to "Start Me Up" were You'd make a dead man cum while the cut lyrics from "Rough Justice" were: Once upon a time I was your little red rooster/now I'm just one of your cocks. You can read about it here.

So, the words are a little racy; so what? First of all, if the League couldn't handle this kind of language that they knew in advance existed in some of the Rolling Stones' songs, then why hire them in the first place? Why hire them and then ask them to cut out some of their lyrics? Yes, the Stones did initially agree to censure the words and then went back on their word, but come on, why the big kerfuffle? I don't understand why people would think it was unappropriate, especially since they knew in advance that it would be the rock 'n' roll band, the Stones, playing, not Sharon, Lois, and Bram. So, yes, if the children's singing trio had used words like cum and cock, then maybe that would shock people. But these are the Stones we're talking about, and if you simply cannot handle them, don't hire them. Besides, it's not like the Stones have extremely good diction when they sing and we can hear every word so clearly... no, sometimes their lyrics are hard to understand, and I bet most people didn't know those lyrics even existed (even after hearing the song many times before).

Some people!
I think I need a hot chocolate.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wait a sec...are you saying that you think there's something WRONG with Sharon, Lois and Bram?!?! That does it, I'm boycotting...

Anonymous said...

I need a hot chocolate

Zaza said...

I don't know if bad words that are within normal or proper words count. Although, I do know that my neighbour, Michael Hunt, suffers regularly from people laughing shockingly at his full name, especially since he goes by "Mike".