The story becomes curiouser and curiouser -- at least a lesson in the mendacity of corp-speak. The appended is from Wednesday's NY Times.
--CGE
* * *
September 19, 2001
THE POP LIFE
After the Horror, Radio Stations Pull Some Songs
By NEIL STRAUSS
Clear Channel Communications, the Texas-based company that owns about
1,170 radio stations nationwide, has circulated a list of 150 songs
and asked its stations to avoid playing them because of the attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Some listed songs would be insensitive to play right now, such as the
Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" and Soundgarden's "Blow Up the
Outside World," but other choices, critics and musicians say, are less
explicable because they have little literal connection to the
tragedies.
These include "Ticket to Ride" by the Beatles, "On Broadway" by the
Drifters and "Bennie and the Jets" by Elton John. Even odder, some
songs on the list are patriotic, like Neil Diamond's "America." Others
speak of universal optimism, like Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful
World," and others are emotional but hopeful songs that could help
people grieve, like "Imagine" by John Lennon, "Bridge Over Troubled
Water" by Simon and Garfunkel, "Peace Train" by Cat Stevens and "A
World Without Love" by Peter and Gordon.
The move by Clear Channel, whose collective broadcasts reach more than
110 million listeners in the nation weekly, was voluntary. Many
stations, including some in the New York area, said they were
disregarding the list, which was distributed internally.
Another Peter and Gordon song, "I Go to Pieces," made the list. "I
suppose a song about someone going to pieces could be upsetting if
someone took it literally," said Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon after
learning that the group's two songs were on the list. "But 'I can't
live in a world without love' is a sentiment that's as true in crisis
as it is in normal times. It's a totally pro-love sentiment and could
only be helpful right now."
A Clear Channel spokeswoman emphasized that the list was not a mandate
or order to radio programmers. In a statement, the company said the
list came not from the corporate offices but from "a grass-roots
effort that was apparently circulated among program directors."
Others in the Clear Channel network, speaking on condition of
anonymity, told a more complicated story. They said that a smaller
list of questionable songs was originally generated by the corporate
office, but an overzealous regional executive began contributing
suggestions and circulating the list via e-mail, where it continued to
grow.
Either way, compliance with the list varied from station to station.
Angela Perelli, the vice president for operations at KYSR (98.7 FM) in
Los Angeles, said the station was not playing any of the listed songs
and had previously pulled a couple of the cited songs, "Jumper" by
Third Eye Blind and "Fly" by Sugar Ray, on its own accord. On the
other hand, Bob Buchmann, the program director and an on-air
personality at WAXQ-FM (104.3) in Manhattan, said that some songs on
the list ("American Pie" by Don McLean, "Imagine" and others) happened
to be among the most-played songs on his station. In the meantime, the
station decided not to broadcast some songs even though they did not
make the list, such as "When You're Falling," a collaboration between
Peter Gabriel and Afro-Celt Sound System that had fictional lyrics too
eerily similar to the truth.
In 1942 the United States government issued a list of suggested
wartime practices for radio broadcasters. In the interest of national
safety, it advised radio programmers to ban weather forecasts, which
could help the enemy plan a bombing attack, and to avoid
man-on-the-street interviews and listener music requests in case the
interviewee or caller was a spy conveying a coded message to the enemy
in words or song.
The new list is clearly different. Instead of promoting national
safety, its intended aim is to ensure national mental health, though
First Amendment supporters may point to it as the first shadowy
blacklist in what President Bush says will be a war against terrorism.
Radio programmers and producers outside of Clear Channel said that
they found the list bewildering. "There are obviously songs on there
that people could take the wrong way," said Michael Stark, a freelance
producer who works on "The Tom Joyner Morning Show" on the ABC Radio
Network. "But there are just as many that could be used to heal and
bring context to the tragedy. It seems from the list that they don't
want anything that comes close to making waves."
In an odd anomaly on the list, a specific song or songs are mentioned
for each artist except for one: the politically minded rap-rock group
Rage Against the Machine. For this band, the list simply considers
"all Rage Against the Machine songs" questionable.
Tom Morello, the guitarist in Rage Against the Machine, said via
e-mail that the band's music "is diametrically opposed to the kind of
horrible violence committed against innocent people" that occurred in
the Sept. 11 attacks, "which we condemn in the strongest possible
terms."
"If our songs are 'questionable' in any way," he added, "it is that
they encourage people to question the kind of ignorance that breeds
intolerance intolerance which can lead to censorship and the
extinguishing of our civil liberties, or at its extremes can lead to
the kind of violence we witnessed" last week.
Nina Crowley, the executive director of the Massachusetts Music
Industry Coalition, a free-speech organization, worried that this was
just the beginning of suppression of artistic expression and that
politicians and corporations that have been trying to restrict access
to popular music may expand and perpetuate this list. "President Bush
said to be prepared for a long engagement," she said, "so this could
potentially continue and grow, and these songs could be removed from
the public ear for a long time. This list has eliminated songs about
flying and falling, but when something else happens, do we remove all
the songs about trains and whatever else?"
--30--