Grumble magazine

American radio’s always had a few utterances that it felt too delicate for our Puritan-descended ears. No surprise that songs with these little bad boys get the unmentionables blanked out; no surprise that everyone can figure out the missing words anyway. Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill is now tied with Whitney Houston for best-selling female album in America ever, at 12 million copies. But I think it’s safe to say that the other 200+ million of us who don’t own the album and haven’t heard the uncut singles can still emphathize with Alanis’ poor spurned heart as her ex is “thinking of me when you ____ her.” Or whether Ms. Canadian Alterna-chanteuse’s rival would “go ____ on you in a theatre.” (Nobody is sitting beside the radio wondering, “What’s that young woman mean, Mabel? ‘Go for popcorn’?”)

America has grown used to casual bleeping, but the practice is by no means universal. For instance, our neighbors to the north don’t bother. A friend of mine who grew up near Buffalo, NY (Buffalo NY/St. Catherine’s ONT, “the San Diego/Tijuana of the Northeast”) commented that she could hear Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” fully unedited at noon on a Canadian station — but the American stations, even in the middle of the night, would leave you to wonder what Trent Reznor wanted to do to you like an animal.

1996, however, saw the advent of a new class of naughty words. This
first came to the author’s attention when he heard the radio edit of the Butthole Surfers‘ “Pepper”. (I won’t even go into the fact that in 1991, when this band was on Lollapalooza, the Syracuse Herald-American puritanically called them the “B***hole Surfers”.)

“Pepper” is a rambling song about a bunch of on-the-edge Texan youths with a death wish, and the various mishaps that befall them. Of one of these characters, singer Gibby Haynes sings that he “took a bullet in the leg” but it “should have been a better shot [and] got him in the head.” The song contains no conventional obscenities, but MTV censors still went at it with scissors, blanking out “bullet” and “shot”.

I found this odd until the radio version of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals “Scooby Snacks” re-entered airplay. This song is a bit more risque than “Pepper”, being about a dream the singer had in which he and some friends rob a bank while on Valium. Unsurprisingly, the various standard obscenities are blanked out. Surprisingly, so are the words “Gats” and “the nine”, both slang references to guns.

In the era of increasing urban violence (and legislatures trying to repeal an automatic weapons bills), perhaps the various radio directors or record PR people are trying to reduce accusations that they are promoting violence with “gangsta” or other violent lyrics. (Side note: while the author certainly does not wish to condone robbing banks, it’s worth mention that no one is injured in the narrative of “Scooby Snacks”, and the narrator even states that “no one gets hurt if they don’t act funny.”)

So maybe the removal of the “gun” words is an attempt to downplay any negative message contained within the song. At least in intention, this is admirable. With Tupac Shakur off to the big Tyson fight in the sky, and even Dr. Dre moving away from the gangsta image, maybe the music industry has gone too far and should take such steps. Mysterious, then, is the continued inclusion in “Scooby Snacks” of the sample from Pulp Fiction, in which Amanda Plummer screams “…any of you ____ing pricks move and I’ll execute every motherf___ing last one of you.” Yes, “pricks” seems to be permissible. Then note the sample from Reservoir Dogs: “Torture you? That’s a good idea.” Repeat after me, kids: killing and torturing people is ok, just don’t mention the gun.

So I have to wonder what the Canadians think about all of this (note cool “segue” back to opening paragraphs.) Canadian handgun violence is trivial compared to that of the good ol’ rootin-tootin’
Second-Amendment-wavin’ U. S. of A. You’d think maybe the Canadians would then be more concerned about discouraging gun violence. But yet their radio waves blare out unedited. They realize that papering over a few verbs won’t hide kids from the fact that Sex Exists — and that if lyrics really do have the power to turn Calgary into Compton, smudging out the references to Glocks isn’t going to stop that.