Head Tale

So yeah…

I was trying to think of a good clip to feature for Music Monday now that it's Freedom to Read Week.  I thought about posting Elvis' infamous early Milton Berle appearance which led to him only being filmed from the waist up when he later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.  But that's pretty tame by today's standards – sort of like how people still want to challenge “Catcher in the Rye” because the words “heck” and “gosh-darn” are in there.

Then I remembered a song I heard when I first moved into college dorms – pretty much fresh off the farm at 17 – when the most rebellious music I knew was Def Leppard. 

I actually didn't even hear the song from the shock rock outfit, the Mentors (and until about five minutes ago, had never heard it.)  Instead, a a floormate quoted some of the lyrics to me and they have been seared into my brain ever since.

Still, that famous line about “I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death, your right to say it” applies here.  It has to because if it doesn't, freedom of expression is absolutely meaningless. 

I'm actually nervous about hitting the “Submit” button this post because this is some pretty disturbing stuff and people always confuse the defense of something with an endorsement.  But ultimately, that's what Freedom of Expression is about.  I am not going to run out and buy a Mentors CD (probably – unless I need to shock some other sheltered small town kid!) but some people do and did.  Some people went to their shows.  As long as there's nothing illegal happening, that's completely within their rights – the band's rights, the fans' rights and according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that's within anyone's rights (as is your right *not* to click through to any lyrics or music I link to in this post.  And trust me, the lines I quoted in the title of this post are pretty much the only two lines in the song that I felt comfortable doing so!)

I'll save you the pain and link to a clip of the live version of the song where the lyrics are hard to understand (here's a link to the album version of the song for the braver souls among you – I won't censor but I will warn you that you can't un-hear this song once you hear it!)

[Edit: I forgot to bring it back to Elvis the Pelvis like I originally wanted to.  One of the strongest anti-censorship arguments that I know is to compare the comments made by people who were disgusted by Elvis with those who were/are disgusted with Eldon Hoke below – “filthy”, “depraved”, “sick”, “demonic”, etc.  Notice something?  They're the exact same words!  To me, that shows that the people who hated Elvis in the 1950's are the exact same type of people who hated Eldon Hoke in the 1990's – even though those same anti-Hoke people in the 1990's probably liked Elvis, took family vacations to Graceland and will shell out for the new Cirque du Soleil Elvis show the next time they're in Vegas.  So to me, it's *really* important to keep in mind that it's all very relative.  Something that offends me today (and Eldon Hoke definitely comes really close!) will probably be a Broadway show that Pace goes to see with his family in thirty years.]