Sonic Youth Gossip - Would you still listen to your old SY records if Lee Ranaldo was convicted as a paedo

Quote:

Originally Posted by jetengine

Good Lord! Some of you people sound so innocent and naive! Don't you realise that conroversial sex drives, unusual opinions and alternative ideologies is what rock 'n' roll--and the arts in general--is all about?!! Christ, it appears as if Oprah Winfrey and Focus On The Family have brainwashed everyone into a false or exaggerated sense of Normal.

I remember coming across a blog awhile back that examined controversial album covers. The original front cover of the Scorpions' Virgin Killer had been posted, and the under-30 crowd was leaving comments like, "Holy Shit!", "Yucko!", "Paedophillia!", etc. I found this rather interesting and somewhat amusing, for I'm old enough to remember when that record originally came out, and pretty much the only people who spoke out against the cover were fundamentalist Christian preachers and televangelists, the uneducated, people who hated 'niggers', 'wops' and 'faggots', etc. Like it or lump it, in school at the time, Virgin Killer--as well as Blind Faith, Houses of the Holy, etc--had the type of front cover that caused the young girls to giggle and the young boys to say (Bart Simpson-style) "Coooool". Times have certainly changed, but not necessarily for the better. It's like Steve Buscemi tells Thora Birch in Ghost World: "Things were more honest and open back then. Things weren't covered up the same...."

But nobody is criticizing provocative album covers here. The whole question was about actual pedophiles, i.e. people who have sex with children. The album covers you mention may make reference to the concept, but that's entirely within free speech, and I think everybody's in favor of that. Real child molestation is not free speech, it's victimization.

I'm totally cool with Glenn Danzig singing about raping your mother and killing your baby, because I can tell art from the real thing. The song is funny and fun. Real abuse isn't.

I still might listen to the music of somebody who does such things, because again, I separate the art from the acts. But condoning the acts? No way.