Clear Channel's "Do Not Play" List

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Tue Sep 18 20:33:54 PDT 2001


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--



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