Would you still listen to your old SY records if Lee Ranaldo was convicted as a paedo
 

I ask this because I tried to buy a Garry Glitter CD in HMV today. I couldn't find even a header card in the G section of the Rock n Pop section so asked a sales assistant where they kept them. To which he told me that they didn't. He sort of acted strange even having to discuss him in public. There was a shitty old Glitter Band comp, but that didn't feature GG at all. He couldn't say if it was company policy not to stock his stuff after his child sex conviction, but he did say that, before me, no one had ever enquired about him, at least to him.

This made me think and so i checked the racks to discover that the shop did stock CDs by a nazi (Burzum), a homophobe (Buju Banton) and a man convicted of attempted murder (Leadbelly). But no Gary Glitter. I'm sure a lot of people stopped buying his records after his conviction but that's not to say he was probabably shifting that many just prior to it. But what about a relatively popular band like SY? Would you still feel able to listen to, say, Mote, if you knew that Lee Ranaldo fucked kids?

Miles Davis was a chronic wife beater...I can still listen to his shit.

All of our record collections are filled with people who committed horrible
acts of violence, held unsavory personal opinions...you have to separate
the artist from the art, in some cases.

senanda matreya and phil spector - related cds are still there?

Yes. But you haven't answered the question.

Ah, I think I'd still listen to his/their music.
I "like" sy members as "human beings" too (well, I like what I know about them and some things they do beside playing in the band), so that would be quite disturbing from that point of view, but honestly when I listen to music I don't think much about anything else but the music.

Yes, I would.

OK.

Probably, yes.


So true.

I've had this thought before...

It's hard to separate an artist from his art, at least in my eyes... it's difficult for me to, say, read a book by someone I don't like, regardless of how good of a writer it is. But I still acknowledge him as a good writer.

With music, the line is blurred a bit more, because even if Lee was a child molestor, the rest of the band isn't -- he is merely 25% (or 20% when O'Rourke was there) of a band... why should I stop listening to a band because I don't like one member?

Basically, it comes down to.. if good music is good music, then it doesn't really matter to me, because most musicians have probably done a shit-ton of things I don't agree with or that are evil in my eyes. I can't deny a good riff, no matter who wrote it.

For example, I really enjoy Charles Manson's solo records... I think he wrote some damn good songs. I don't mind some Skrewdriver and some Vaginal Jesus also... there's this amazing racist black metal/crust hybrid band called ARGHOSLENT that's just amazing... I will never completely see eye-to-eye with anyone's points of views or actions so I'm not going to stop listening to music just because I don't agree with what they've done.

It sure would give some songs a creepy edge though... "Hey Joni" for example could actually be about a little girl Lee molested!

My mum smashed ALL of her Gary Glitter records in our garden when he was convicted.


I think i would still listen to SY.

Just feel lucky it wasn't Kim. PCH would definitely start raising a few eyebrows.

By all, I'm assuming she had quite a few then. That's fairly mad. I didn't think anyone owned more than one of his records.

He was convicted in a Thai court. Where they also put people to death for drug offenses.

Do you really believe that Thai or Viet justice is the same as American or British justice?

my balls smell particularly newsworthy today .

I really belive that countries like the UK have to come to terms with their witch-hunt approach to crime and the like. The media and the police love a good witch hunt. It sells papers and it justifies the police's existence.

If anything SY deserves insane credit for pushes the limits of mainstream tolerance. Without reasonable 'art' or music to discuss and digest the rest would be Disney type insanity.

Can you imagne what type of sex offenders we would have in this world if all the content we had access to was Disney and family programming....

Actually, Glitter had already served a prison sentence in Britain for kid-related-pervery, before getting done in Thailand.

Yes, I would; however, my interpretations of Lee's songs might be altered somewhat by the conviction, and that could lead to said records or songs being played considerably less.

I liken the attack on sex-offenders to the same mentalities that supported Senator McCarthy in the 40's....

Just different era.

Are you suggesting that Sonic Youth are a positive force in the fight against child molestation?

Ahem, so do I take it you're comparing people hounded for their left-leaning beliefs to people who take sexual pleasure in children being raped, abused and humiliated? Not sure that I get that comparison, really.

EDIT: How have SY "pushed the limits of mainstream tolerance"? For real taboo-breaking, look at Throbbing Gristle for a group of people who really did look at taboo and unallowable subjects.