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The stiffs in suits at BBC Radio One are defending a decision to edit lyrics out of the song Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and the late Kirsty MacColl. The track was first released back in 1987 and is being played on Radio 1 in the run up to Christmas with the word faggot removed. The BBC says members of the audience would find it offensive. But the decision was branded “ridiculous” by Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles, who is leading a campaign to make the 1987 song the Christmas number one.
Twenty years of playing this track unedited hasn’t really left the British listening public up in arms, or screaming ‘Equal rights for faggots.’ That’s because the British public doesn’t really care, or at least is not going to be offended by such a word. It takes you back to the days when the station had been playing Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax for weeks until DJ Mike Reid had a moment of realisation and learned that the song was filled with sexual connotations.
The Beeb has long seen itself as judge and jury to what we can and cannot hear. Radio does seem to be the last bastion of ‘decency’ – whereas on TV you can hear every word a 12 year old will look for in the Oxford Dictionary after the watershed, but you won’t hear it on the radio – or very rarely anyway. This is quite remarkable when you consider that you’re actually seeing and hearing someone swear on the box in the corner, but on the wireless it’s deemed as too offensive.
TV has changed, some may say become more liberated over the years. The BBC used to show blockbusting movies carefully dubbed to alter the swear words. I remember watching Robo-Cop and rather than bleeping words like MF – they over dubbed them with ‘Mother-Crusher’ etc. This is despite the fact the film was full of gratuitous violence and mindless killing; but at least the British public could switch off the telly safe in the knowledge that if they’re ever going to get the living daylights beaten out of them in the street by an easily influence kid, at least they won’t be swore at…!
Double A-side single on Peski Recs (PESKI008)
Released on Giant Hammer Records.
Gianthammer is a newly formed, fiercely independent imprint that is more DIY than the combined talents of Homebase, MFI and B&Q added together. Intent on offering an insight into the current Welsh extreme music scene, they have paired five tracks from acerbic noisemongers Klaus Kinski with a long improvisational piece from psychedelic trio Ectogram. There is over an hours worth of music here, guaranteeing value for money with the meagre £5 price.
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I occasionally get drawn to the TV – shite TV. Yes I’ll watch a film most nights I’m not out, but that’s late on, usually after 11pm. What I’m talking about is shite TV – I mean soap operas…
Coronation Street..! I was drawn to the wedding of the err… ahem… year between Sarah and Jason. It would be crap if they managed to get married without a hitch – what sort of soap opera would that be like…! Every single one has a dramatic wedding, be it Eastenders, Neighbours, Emmerdale, Eldorado, Holly Oaks etc etc…
Sarah has a deranged half-brother called David Platt (not the ex-footballer) played by the highly believable (for a soap star) Jack Shepherd. The soon to be wedded couple are at the altar, but David has vowed [sic] to spoil their day and has gone missing, threatening suicide. Only Sarah and her mate know about this and tore up his ‘suicide note.’ Mother Gail Platt has informed the police that her son is merely missing and had taken his blue car. As the ceremony takes place, David drives his car into the Manchester Ship Canal.
Now this is where the barely believable story becomes ridiculously unbelievable…
The police turn up at the wedding – insisting to speak to Gail Platt just as her daughter is about to take her vows. They tell her a blue car was seen only a few minutes earlier by a member of the public being driven into the canal…
Now hold on a minute… They hadn’t seen the car themselves – the divers had yet to go in, and therefore the only news they had was from a witness. Find me a police force in the UK that would interrupt a wedding to tell the bride’s mother that someone has reported (not found) a blue car being driven into a canal…? And also a police force would can act quick enough to discover that the family are at a wedding in a church and not at home.
What a load of bollocks, – at least Stacey shagging her new husband’s Dad over on Eastenders was a little more believable, if not just as shite..!
This was released today; the second single taken off the album Hey Venus! (on Rough Trade).
Paying homage to the wall of sound production used by Phil Spector where the band were looking to make ‘a dirty, grimy sixties pop song.’
