Is racism REALLY that relevant in music?

Oh yeah i already agreed with you to a point, of course you don't have to like music AND agree with whatever prejudices the musician has,. I mean, i love Bad Brains even though i know they're homophobic idiots.
I know little about the club scene then but do know that he did frequent clubs where ska and reggae was played and where it was mostly black people there.

I think in this case it was Lydon wanting to live up to the Rotten image of old, wanted to a be seen as that rebel image again so said something controversial.
 
I doubt Lydon is really racist, wasn't he hanging about in ska clubs before the Pistols? You could say that that isn't enough to say he isn't racist but then would a racist really hang around in a mainly black scene?
 
Even today, some rock historians give Holly more credit than they give Berry, even though Berry came first and has more of a claim to the "original singer-songwriter-guitaris" tag. I think it's pretty sad that Little Richard doesn't get much credit either (I'm not a fan of his music, but I think he was far more inventive and possibly influential than many of his contemporaries).

But yeah, Pat Boone's work is wretched, and I think it's proof that there was some sort of racism back then that people would buy the "safe" versions of rock songs (i.e., made by a white guy).
 
It is quite funny that some people call the early skinhead scene racist when they were listening to Reggae and Ska especially in England late 60's/early 70's and indeed beyond with 2 tone.
 
I think a few people do not understand what I meant by race not being relevant in TODAY'S music. I understand completely that it was an issue way back when, youth should not be mistaken for stupidity...
 
The Birmingham immigration shit and I seem to remeraber Clapton saying something derogative about Jimi Hendrix (he implied that he shouldn't be producing psychedelic music because of the color of his skin). He immediately regretted his statement, and as a sign, thereafter he invited African-American musicians to perform in his band. It was all pretty much all racist bullshit though.

And yes, Elvis Costello is too a racist.
 
Haha i forgot about that rant, forgot when it was, got a source?

It's uncomfortable reading yes. The two ways you could look at it is that there's someone who is either actually biased towarRAB black music due to race or someone who is so biased towarRAB that sort of music that he takes it's popularity as an attack on other music.
The generalising is disgusting to be frank. An attack on modern black music simply because of whats in the charts? Give over. I agree with him on the likes of Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston, their music says nothing to me either but i wouldn't dare use THEM as an example for an attack on a whole race's fucking music. Goes without saying there is far better stuff going on in the underground.

I don't really know what to make of it because, yes it is quite blatantly an attack on race, but then you've Morrissey and his stupid drama-queen double entendres he whips out half the time. You never really know whether he means what he says or not half the time.
"Obviously to get on Top Of The Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black.", could be taken as ignorant and tongue-in-cheek either way.

I know it takes away the mystique he loves so much but i really would love him to take part in an extensive interview over all this to clear it all up once and for all. He's an intelligent person really and should be the last person to be racist, but this kind of thing really does annoy me. One thing for sure is he's a fucking idiot with stuff like this, talk about Bigmouth.
 
From Rolling Stone.

During Costello's 1979 tour of the U.S., when one night in a bar in Colurabus, Ohio, at odRAB with the Stephen Stills Band, Costello suddenly denounced Ray Charles as "a blind , arrogant, nigger," he said much the same about James Brown, and attacked the stupidity of American black music in general. Bramlett decked him; the incident quickly made the papers, then "People" magazine, and the resulting scandal forced a New York press conference - Costello's first real face-to-face encounter with journalists since the Fall of 1977 - where he tried to explain himself, and , according to both Costello and those who questioned him, failed.

Clapton never said anything that extreme, he does have some rather conservative views about immigration but thats not enough to make him a racist, I mean c'mon, Eric Clapton? Think about that for a sec, this guy has been trying to be black for the majority of his career. :laughing:
 
Hmm, that was back in the 80's where he claimed that stuff like the 'Reggae is vile' was tongue-in-cheek. He's said positive things about black music after this of as well of course so it's all up in the air as ever, grr.
 
then I stand corrected. But on another note, I find it hilarious that Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs stood in to 'back up' keke okereke in the fight.

And I think that if all those punks back in the 70's knew that one day Johnny Rotten would have an entourage, they would have threw out their safety pin dresses there and then.
 
The whole Rock against racism thing in the 70s started after Clapton made a comment about how the UK was becoming overcrowded and was becoming a black colony at a gig in Birmingham.
 
Does it matter if music expresses racism...NO!

People have a right to their own opinion, and if music isn't true to the heart it enRAB up sucking...hard.
 
Clapton and Costello were both apparrently drunk when they made these statements, to be fair.

There was also something David Bowie said that set people off, but he's always been trying to offend people, and he married a black woman so ehhhhhhh...
 
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