2 Live Crewsletter
Bienvenidos.
Let’s not waste any time, I’m already late enough.
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READS
— HighSnobiety’s Sarah Osei interviewed RMR, the country-tinged rapper who’s been gaining ground with his genre-bending tunes as the pandemic goes on. The artist hopes that the music he creates helps move everyone forward by finding common ground: “Cultures are meshing. And we’re growing, we’re not staying dumb. We’re not judging that person because we’re prejudiced,” the anonymous artist told Osei. “Because it’s all about understanding. Ignorance isn’t cute anymore. It’s not blissful. It’s time to grow, for everybody.” His fantastic EP — Drug Dealing Is A Lost Art — is available on all streaming platforms. Definitely check out “I’m Not Over You.”
— I greatly enjoyed Alex Ross’ extensive examination of the use of Richard Wagner compositions in film throughout history for the New Yorker. A favored composer in Nazi Germany, his music is present in everything from Bugs Bunny cartoons to Apocalypse Now.
— It was a treat to learn more about Pylon, the legendary Athens rock band that inspired R.E.M. among countless others, via this Lars Gotrich NPR interview. The group’s discography is getting a box set reissue in a matter of weeks.
— Somebody (VICE’s Josh Terry) finally talked to Daniel Romano about his wild year. The Canadian artist has produced probably my favorite music of the year so far, but he has a huge edge because he’s released NINE ALBUMS so far that run the gamut from punk to country to prog and even an album-length of cover of Bob Dylan’s Infidels emulating what it would sound like if he did the whole record with the Plugz like that one David Letterman performance (I recently put on the rehearsals for that … so good).
— “Godzilla Is A Metaphor,” declares Leah Carlson-Downie’s essay for BWDR. Not in that way, though. Carlson-Downie’s piece is a touching examination of what it means to make yourself vulnerable by openly sharing your taste as she digs through her experiences with an ex who loved Godzilla movies but refused to show her one until she did all the homework. For her, the King of Monsters symbolizes “the fear you feel when you show someone a flawed movie that you nevertheless love. It’s the pressure you feel when you’re watching your best friend’s favorite movie with them for the first time, and they keep looking at you to see how you’re reacting. It’s the rush you get when you find other people who share your fandoms. It’s the sting you feel when someone you thought was cool trashes a film you treasure. It’s the conviction that your taste in media reveals an essential part of yourself.”
— Karina Longworth did a Vulture interview about the latest season of You Must Remember This, her incredible Hollywood history podcast that covered the life and career of Polly Platt. When asked how she wanted to be remembered, she quoted Kay Francis: “I can’t wait to be forgotten!”
BEST PICTURE CHECK-IN
It’s been a bit and I’ve made it out of the 80s and 90s into the new millennium of Best Picture winners. A couple first timers in here that I loved, as well as some old favorites.
I have a newfound affection for Titanic thanks to a complete James Cameron binge for The Blank Check podcast. Silence of the Lambs, predictably, is still among my favorite movies of all time. Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven was thrilling! Meanwhile, I really did not enjoy my time with American Beauty, Chicago, Driving Miss Daisy, or Shakespeare In Love. Looking forward to continuing this journey. I have less than 20 to go and I’ve been allowing more space in between watches so it’s gotten a lot more pleasant.
The Twitter thread cataloging my experience is still going, as well as my reviews on Letterboxd.
THE BIG CENSORSHIP STICKER
226 uses of the “F-word,” 117 explicit terms for the male and female genitalia, 87 descriptions of oral sex, 163 uses of the word “bitch,” 15 uses of “ho,” 81 uses of “the vulgarity S — — T,” 4 descriptions of group sex, 1 reference to incest, and over a dozen illustrations of violent sex. These are the verbal offenses said to be perpetrated on 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be — the first album ever to be declared legally obscene in the United States.
Until recently I’d never thought about the Miami rap foursome as political crusaders, but that was before I watched Banned In The USA. The 1990 Penelope Spheeris documentary follows the group’s clashes with protesters and the government in the wake of Nasty’s release and leading up to the release of their follow-up album of the same name, the first record to bear the PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT sticker.
Spheeris intercuts music videos and live concert footage with interviews and news coverage of the uproar at the time.
“2 Live Crew does not, by law, have the right to say what they are saying,” Pamela Harney of the Concerned Women For America. Harney was one of two people — alongside a representative of the Dallas Association For Decency — reading off the list of obscenities on Nasty.
“We have a community trying to dictate its more standards upon the population,” the ACLU’s Joe Cook told Spheeris. “Obscenity is a highly personal and subject matter.”
In the wake of the record’s release, Charles Freeman, a black music store owner, is arrested in Ft. Lauderdale for selling a copy to an undercover Broward County Sheriff’s deputy. Not long after, 2 Live Crew members Luther “Luke” Campbell and Christopher “Fresh Kid Ice” Wong Won are arrested for performing in concert.
“Who would ever think that here in the United States of America we would be telling grown people what they can purchase and what they can’t purchase,” Luke said.
Protesters jockey for time in front of the camera, some saying that rap music is basically to blame for everything morally wrong in America and others saying that people should be allowed to make and consume the art they want to and that the persecution of 2 Live Crew is rooted in racism.
The crew make their thoughts clear on the matter: “We were selling records in black community it wasn’t no problem,” said Brother Marquis. “When we started crossing over, that’s when the problem came.
“For black people, you know, sometimes we sit down and think whether or not the First Amendment applies to us.”
Campbell echoes him: “You had these leftover bigots out there, the leftover racists, the ones who didn’t like Elvis, the ones who didn’t like black singers, these right wing group people who sit around (saying), ‘Don’t listen to nigger music. Don’t do the nigger dancing,’ and all this here,” he said. “We do have a few of those people left over.”
The sex that dominates the lyrics of 2 Live Crew is all over the documentary, particularly in the performance sections, where you can see tons of booty shaking action on the stage from the group’s dancers and audience members. Be warned: This documentary is not totally NSFW. This, Campbell would say, is natural for the crew.
“We’re sexual guys. Making love is our claim to fame.”
Several people — black and white — wonder aloud if this policy is going to get more restrictive to effect artists like George Michael, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Cher, and Madonna. An unidentified white man on a TV show asks the same question: “If we arrest Luther how come we’re not arresting Madonna and what is the difference and how wavy is this line?”
Campbell compares the Crew’s lyrics to the work of a pair of highly sexual, explicit comedians Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay: “We just put what they say in the form of a rap. It’s all shock value.”
As the cultural uproar surrounding the album escalates, so do the sales totals. Nasty would go on to become a platinum record.
“Our record is a year old but all the publicity is a lot of people (whose) curiosity is aroused. We’re selling records to a totally different audience,” Campbell said in an interlude. “I take a precaution that nobody else has, I’ve stickered my album, I made two versions, I still got these clowns (running after me).”
One passage of the film deals with a violent episode that broke out at a planned 2 Live Crew show in Dallas, where we meet a woman with a thick Texan accent identified as Leida Dickerson — proprietor of the Longhorn Ballroom — who speaks about her venue securing a deal with the local government to keep the show on after law enforcement made moves to cancel the concert. However, the Crew refuses to go on without getting paid, which leads to angry attendees of all creeds starting to throw chairs and generally tearing up the place.
This racial intermingling at the concert is somewhat inspiring for Luther, who sees rap music and culture as one of the surest bridges to racial unity.
“Rap music is the only music that when you go to the concert you see black and white people together,” he said. “When you go see Mick Jagger’s playing the concert hall, you know what you see? Doctors, lawyers, you see politicians … This right here is going to change the whole … this is going to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream come true.”
The documentary closes and opens with the same song, the title track off of Banned In The USA. Built around a sample of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA,” the song is a missive on free speech featuring a Ronald Reagan impersonator
“What is this? Is this not America? This is not China! This is not Russia! This is not the place where they brought down the wall,” Luke shouts over Roy Bittan’s legendary synth riff. “This is America!”
More startling to the political right at the time was that Springsteen — a big proponent of First Amendment rights and an artist seemingly always mistaken for a conservative — personally approved 2 Live Crew’s use of the sample.
“He's aware of Luke's situation, and to the extent that by approving this it helps in the area of free speech and showing support for freedom of expression, that is something Bruce is happy about and feels it's a good thing,” Springsteen manager Jon Landau told Richard Harrington of the Washington Post in 1990.
An L.A. Times article closer to the July 4 release of the “Banned In The USA” single reported that Jack Thompson, the Florida attorney that engineered the campaign that led to a obscenity decision, lashed out at Springsteen: “Bruce (Springsteen) and Luther can go to hell together,” Thompson said in a telephone interview for the piece. “Bruce Springsteen is facilitating the sexual abuse of women and the mental molestation of children by giving 2 Live Crew the use of his music.”
The boldest — and most patriotic — part of “Banned In The USA” is closing coda, when Campbell draws lines and, at the same, finds common ground with the people he’s fighting this against in this culture war:
“…the simple fact of it all is that we are bonded by the First Amendment! We have the freedom of expression! We have the freedom of choice! And you, Chinese, black, green, purple, Jew. You have the right to listen to whoever you want to and even the 2 Live Crew! So all you right-wingers, left-wingers, bigots, Communists, there is a place for you in this world! Because this is the land of the free, the home of the brave. And 2 Live is what we are!”
I think this doc is well worth the 47 minutes:
TUNES
Eli Winter’s guitar music has been a wonderful reading soundtrack lately. Just lovely instrumentation throughout his new album Unbecoming.
Sepia tinted indie rock laden with acoustic guitars and chilled out effects. I’m really looking forward to the new Yves Jarvis album, “Sundry Rock Song Stock,” which comes out at the end of September.
Treble put together A History of Synth-Pop over 50 songs. It has some of the usual suspects — Kraftwerk, Devo, A Flock of Seagulls, and any number of Giorgio Moroder-produced 80s acts running all the way up through modern innovators like Robyn, Chvrches, and Jenny Hval — but I was particularly intrigued by a few I hadn’t heard of. Specifically Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene, Pt. 4” which has 1.8M YouTube views wildly and Japan’s “Life in Tokyo,” which sounds like a glammy Talk Talk cut:
A heartfelt cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen” by three of the best singer/songwriters in the game today.
I mentioned him earlier, but Daniel Romano keeps cranking the hits out. “Green Eye Shade” is the last swaggering single for his new album How Ill Thy World Is Ordered.
Thanks for tuning in even though it’s been a while. I’ll try to be a little quicker on the draw in the coming months.
Best,
Derek Operle