Billboard Feb. 15

LIFE DURING WARTIME: After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, music radio had to walk a line between rediscovering its role as information source and making sure the songs played weren’t offensive. Some stations dropped music for a day or two of wall-to-wall coverage. Some instituted news breaks at the top of each hour, and there was that flak about Clear Channel circulating a list of songs radio should avoid. With talk of a possible imminent war, radio is again evaluating how best to serve the public during such a time. Aside from figuring out what songs to shelve, stations will also look for songs that inspire. Curtiss Johnson is station manger of KRXQ/classic rock KSEG Sacaramento. He says that classic rock, especially, has a good selection of patriotic songs and "will salt in more when we are finally at war with Iraq," he says. "It’s important not to go overboard with song choice or presentation."
(snip)

TOM REPLIES:
No matter your sympathy, surely you cannot (and will not) be proscribed from universal song topics such as diversity, inclusion, pride, compassion, and spirit.

The reason this is relevant TODAY is the question on everybody's tongue: "Where are the songs of peace, compassion and tolerance?"

At that time, Sept 18 (and beyond) all benefits were cancelled. Of special note were the Landmine Free World Concerts. Another was the Audrey Hepburn Foundation Concert for Afghanistan Children. I urged my fellow artists in vain to continue with their actvities, such as their hearts and consciences compelled them. A blanket of silence descended upon us all, and it contnues to grow to this day.

Clear Channel is deeply entrenched in the Bush Administration and the subsequent Branding of America campaign. I urge you as musicians to turn your lyrical powers to the examination of decency and conscience.

Please copy this message to a NEW DOCUMENT and add your own name and send it to your friends. If you do not wish to add your name, please forward directly as you wish Thank you. PEACE!

PETITION SEPT. 18, 2001

We will not tolerate intolerance.

We, the undersigned, do respectfully request that the nationwide blacklist of songs be allowed to expire quietly.

We believe that Americans have proven their colors this week, and are capable of deciding for themselves the merits of such works as "Imagine," "Fire and Rain," "Bridge Over Trouble Waters," "Wonderful World," and "Doctor My Eyes."

WE whose songs have escaped the scrutiny of the censors find no cause to celebrate. We know that as the list expands, that our own songs will be targeted next. Diminishing any one of our songwriting partners indeed diminishes all of us. We take pride in our participation in the weaving of the American fabric: We have performed at your radio station benefits, and our songs have been used in your presidential campaigns.

If the power of the national broadcasting industry has been consolidated in the hands of a few small-minded individuals, then let them appear in Congressional hearings so that we may know of their qualifications. If a
national list of WordCrimes has been established, please let us know what exact words have been abolished, such as "Heaven," "Flying" and "Fire." We would like to get back to work and continue to participate in this noble experiment called American Freedom of Speech.

We, the undersigned, do say:

"Let the poets sing. For they alone shall parse the silences between the words, the heartbeats of the newborn child, the number of angels in a mote of sunlight."

Let the poets sing.

Thank you.

Respectfully,
TOM BARGER

http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/news/songs.html
Jack Evans programmer Clear Channels List of Songs with Questionable Lyrics
Artist Title
Drowning Pool "Bodies"
Mudvayne "Death Blooms"
Megadeth "Dread and the Fugitive"
Megadeth "Sweating Bullets"
Saliva "Click Click Boom"
P.O.D. "Boom"
Metallica "Seek and Destroy"
Metallica "Harvester or Sorrow"
Metallica "Enter Sandman"
Metallica "Fade to Black"
All Rage Against The Machine songs
Nine Inch Nails "Head Like a Hole"
Godsmack "Bad Religion"
Tool "Intolerance"
Soundgarden "Blow Up the Outside World"
AC/DC "Shot Down in Flames"
AC/DC "Shoot to Thrill"
AC/DC "Dirty Deeds"
AC/DC "Highway to Hell"
AC/DC "Safe in New York City"
AC/DC "TNT"
AC/DC "Hell's Bells"
Black Sabbath "War Pigs"
Black Sabbath "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"
Black Sabbath "Suicide Solution"
Dio "Holy Diver"
Steve Miller "Jet Airliner"
Van Halen "Jump"
Queen "Another One Bites the Dust"
Queen "Killer Queen"
Pat Benatar "Hit Me with Your Best Shot"
Pat Benatar "Love is a Battlefield"
Oingo Boingo "Dead Man's Party"
REM "It's the End of the World as We Know It"
Talking Heads "Burning Down the House"
Judas Priest "Some Heads Are Gonna Roll"
Pink Floyd "Run Like Hell"
Pink Floyd "Mother"
Savage Garden "Crash and Burn"
Dave Matthews Band "Crash Into Me"
Bangles "Walk Like an Egyptian"
Alanis Morissette "Ironic"
Barenaked Ladies "Falling for the First Time"
Fuel "Bad Day"
John Parr "St. Elmo's Fire"
Peter Gabriel "When You're Falling"
Kansas "Dust in the Wind"
Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven"
The Beatles "A Day in the Life"
The Beatles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
The Beatles "Ticket To Ride"
The Beatles "Obla Di, Obla Da"
Bob Dylan/Guns N Roses "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
Arthur Brown "Fire"
Blue Oyster Cult "Burnin' For You"
Paul McCartney and Wings "Live and Let Die"
Jimmy Hendrix "Hey Joe"
Jackson Brown "Doctor My Eyes"
John Mellencamp "Crumbling Down"
John Mellencamp "I'm On Fire"
U2 "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Boston "Smokin"
Billy Joel "Only the Good Die Young"
Barry McGuire "Eve of Destruction"
Steam "Na Na Na Na Hey Hey"
Drifters "On Broadway"
Shelly Fabares "Johnny Angel"
Los Bravos "Black is Black"
Peter and Gordon "I Go To Pieces"
Peter and Gordon "A World Without Love"
Elvis "(You're the) Devil in Disguise"
Zombies "She's Not There"
Elton John "Benny & The Jets"
Elton John "Daniel"
Elton John "Rocket Man"
Jerry Lee Lewis "Great Balls of Fire"
Santana "Evil Ways"
Louis Armstrong "What A Wonderful World"
Youngbloods "Get Together"
Ad Libs "The Boy from New York City"
Peter Paul and Mary "Blowin' in the Wind"
Peter Paul and Mary "Leavin' on a Jet Plane"
Rolling Stones "Ruby Tuesday"
Simon And Garfunkel "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Happenings "See You in Septemeber"
Carole King "I Feel the Earth Move"
Yager and Evans "In the Year 2525"
Norman Greenbaum "Spirit in the Sky"
Brooklyn Bridge "Worst That Could Happen"
Three Degrees "When Will I See You Again"
Cat Stevens "Peace Train"
Cat Stevens "Morning Has Broken"
Jan and Dean "Dead Man's Curve"
Martha & the Vandellas "Nowhere to Run"
Martha and the Vandellas/Van Halen "Dancing in the Streets"
Hollies "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
San Cooke Herman Hermits, "Wonder World"
Petula Clark "A Sign of the Times"
Don McLean "American Pie"
J. Frank Wilson "Last Kiss"
Buddy Holly and the Crickets "That'll Be the Day"
John Lennon "Imagine"
Bobby Darin "Mack the Knife"
The Clash "Rock the Casbah"
Surfaris "Wipeout"
Blood Sweat and Tears "And When I Die"
Dave Clark Five "Bits and Pieces"
Tramps "Disco Inferno"
Paper Lace "The Night Chicago Died"
Frank Sinatra "New York, New York"
Creedence Clearwater Revival "Travelin' Band"
The Gap Band "You Dropped a Bomb On Me"
Alien Ant Farm "Smooth Criminal"
3 Doors Down "Duck and Run"
The Doors "The End"
Third Eye Blind "Jumper"
Neil Diamond "America"
Lenny Kravitz "Fly Away"
Tom Petty "Free Fallin'"
Bruce Springsteen "I'm On Fire"
Bruce Springsteen "Goin' Down"
Phil Collins "In the Air Tonight"
Alice in Chains "Rooster"
Alice in Chains "Sea of Sorrow"
Alice in Chains "Down in a Hole"
Alice in Chains "Them Bone"
Beastie Boys "Sure Shot"
Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
The Cult "Fire Woman"
Everclear "Santa Monica"
Filter "Hey Man, Nice Shot"
Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
Korn "Falling Away From Me"
Red Hot Chili Peppers "Aeroplane"
Red Hot Chili Peppers "Under the Bridge"
Smashing Pumpkins "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
System of a Down "Chop Suey!"
Skeeter Davis "End of the World"
Rickey Nelson "Travelin' Man"
Chi-Lites "Have You Seen Her"
Animals "We Gotta Get Out of This Place"
Fontella Bass "Rescue Me"
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels "Devil with the Blue
Dress"
James Taylor "Fire and Rain"
Edwin Starr/Bruce Springstein "War"
Lynyrd Skynyrd "Tuesday's Gone"
Limp Bizkit "Break Stuff"
Green Day "Brain Stew"
Temple of the Dog "Say Hello to Heaven"
Sugar Ray "Fly"
Local H "Bound for the Floor"
Slipknot "Left Behind, Wait and Bleed"
Bush "Speed Kills"
311 "Down"
Stone Temple Pilots "Big Bang Baby," Dead and Bloated"
Soundgarden "Fell on Black Days," Black Hole Sun"
Nina "99Luft Balloons/99 Red Balloons"

You know the world has gone to **** when Peter, Paul, and Mary are considered terrorists.

Oh yeah, almost missed The Beatles and Frank Sinatra.

Uhhm, I seem to recall this as bein' a facical list. A goof.

I just want to say here for the record I am no kin to this Jack Evans fellow. This is also another reason to oppose consolidation of the media any further, and perhaps a reason to start breaking up these media cabals. When the same companies own radio, newspapers, and print media the story is often all one sided.

Almost everything we see on tv, or hear on the radio, or read in the newspapers is controlled by a handful of media companies. After Sept.11 I heard a mix tape of New York Minute by the eagles with the news of the day overlaid. It sent chills down my spine, and brought tears to my eyes. Just thinking about it now I find my vision getting blurry.

has anyone heard "The Univeral Soldier" by Buffy Sain Marie? Donovan Leach made it famous in the 60's during the Nam war. If you have never heard the song find it and listen.

As far as black lists and banning music. Propaganda is Propaganda and blacklisting has been proven to be a tool of Fascists and people who allow fear to rule.

http://www.hollywood.com/news/detail/article/1092320

Like I said, a farcical rumor.


http://news.dmusic.com/article/4061

...and I'm hopin' that this new interest in song banning is also just sumpm for the normal folks of the world to laugh at as they squash it.

lol that would make every hippy band a terrorist.

this is an outrage!!!!! all them..... well if I sung a song about flying I would be banned??? this is bad!!!

hehe, hey Vic noticed Megadeth? and why isnt "Holy Wars" banned too?

wtf? Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven"????

hoot:

My immediate concern at that time upon hearing of the banned list was that my friend co-wrote New York Minute. I asked him to be first to sign the petition but he was afraid. Even tho he works weekly with excommunicated artists like Petty, Jackson, etc.

That is the reason I wrote the lines in the petition that said "we know we will be targeted next." And sure enough for a week on talk radio and email lists a lot of people had a lot of fun dreaming up hundreds of new additions.

Get this straight, I have inside infromation. Like any debt-burdened consolidation, Clear Channel's every effort has been to cut costs, bring all data mining inside the walls, and create a song add program perfectly controlled centrally by only THREE programmers across the entire country.

Randy Michaels comment at that time: "like McDonalds, we hope to ensure a consistent listening exeprience across the country."

The real reason for central programming, to to get an iron grip on the indie promo guys with as little slippage as possible (That is, any side money sticking to a station manager's pocket.)

Commercial radio has trouble proving that the ad spots are actually played when indicated; and difficult to collect the invoices from the ad agencies. Radio doesn't care about music. Songs are only filler between the ads.

Brings us back to the subject at hand, free speech. There will be no peace songs playing on radio. For example, yesterday Richie Havens played his old song "Freedom" to 100,000 people in New York streets. In olden days, free-form jocks would rush to play a breakout like "For What It's Worth," if for no other reason, to hit their demographic...

Major corporations have every reason to avoid tough subjects or controversy; in Clear Channel's case, they are major contributors to Bush.

A long article today in NY Times questions the credibility of today's rap artists and hip hop community. I am no expert in that area, and I know you Dmusic guys are. So please explain to me where are the song lyrics of rage and resistance? Hm?? Are these guys innnit for the money? Or is it case such as I postulate, that the commercial labels create a new kind of robot artist from the top down supply side (my example is Britney and shakira, brain dead meaningless songs.)

Hmm, didn't The Beatles play brain dead meaningless songs at one time, according to the enquirers of credibility? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Personally, I think it's a combination of both. ...the labels work from the top down, and the artists work from the bottom up. I think somewhere in the middle is where we draw the criteria. Music isn't created if no one'll listen, and no one'll listen if music isn't created.

LOk Clear Channels playlist basically suck anyway. They are in it for a buck. They try to stay non controversial which means that radical ideas on either side get ignored. Clear Channel is the cafeteria food of radio, bland, not extreme in any sense, to appeal to the most people. I don't like the idea that they are buying up stations, concert promoters as fast as they can get the loans. Even if there is a list of banned songs, there are a number of people who will still play them. Many of the DMusicians aren't old as you and I and don't remember Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction, Peter, Paul and Mary-Blowin in the Wind, Richie Haven's Freedom (unless they saw the Woodstock movie). How many people actually realize that Buffalo Springfield gave us Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, Poco, Loggins and Messina, Souther, Hillman & Furay, Neil Young & Crazy Horse. All arose from the ashes of the Springfield. (BTW the flip side was a song called "DO I Have to Come Right Out and Say It, a love song".) In the 60's the only means we had at our disposal to protest was to draw physical attention to our causes usually through music or letter to the editor. Today there is the internet. Would demonstrations like those that took place over the past few days have taken place without the internet? Would the numbers have been able to be reached in as short order as it was? The answer is absoultely no. I think that much has moved on to better communication and means to ge the message out.

You are concerned about censorship in the US? try living in a country that has true censorship. I did in Malaysia. CNN is delayed for 30 minutes for pete's sake, so they can filter according to their laws and Prime Minister's moods. Write something there in a newspaper the gov't doesn't like, their license to run a news service is revoked. And the owners often detained for 6 months without charges, and no outside visits, while "under investigation."

At least in America we have access to media that is unheard of in other countries, the ability to search the web umimpeded (unless you're on AOL) or filtered at work for work purposes. The ability to say what we beleive, and think without fear of going to jail for thinking out loud. Imagine 100,000 people in Iraq protesting in the middle of Baghdad. Imagine an Iraqi reporter writing a story critizing Saddahm Hussein.

Take a look at http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?ind=C2100 and see who is giving and who is getting. 74% this past election cycle is going to democrats... since 1990 57% to Dems and 43% to Republicans. Remember it was the Clinton Whitehouse who gave away the farm in copyright with the DMCA. That was the beginning of the end. Everytime time a new story about Monica appearred we launched a few cruise missles at Saddham or Osama. We knew about Osama in 96 during the WTC investigation, Clinton launched a few cruise missles and you see what it got us on Sept 11. We should have wiped him off the face of the earth long before Sept 11th. There is one thing more scary than an axis of evil, an axis of stupidity.

this is totally unbelieveable!!!!
isnt this an infringment on the freedom to express yourself?
I say this is bullshit!!!

lets hope that this is just that...bullshit lmao, got upset there for a minute.

If anyone want to know look up The People's music network on the net. There are a glut of song like duck and cover and a bunch of what people out there call protest songs.
One thing about our side of the fence, we always have the good songs. During the 60's there was a bunch of them.
When I was up in DC with about 500,000 other folks I remembered some other folks on the side line saying,"what about the vets?" Well to my right I heard a young man yelling to them, "USMC here buddy". And he was marching with us.
Here is hoping Bush and his bunch leave and go back to their oil company.
Inbetween time.... "when will they ever learn?" I hope soon.
Still Pickin'
Bill

I must say I look at this "list" and I'm am outraged.

It was nice to see Barry McGuire on PBS before this occured singing a "Modernized" version of "Eve of Destruction" relating to the world today.

Three of my favrotie songs have made this list:

1. Eve of Destruction

2. It's The End of the World as we know it (and I feel fine)

3. Falling for the First Time.

If three of my favorite songs are now "Banned" why should I buy anymore RIAA supported Cd's?

The answer is I shouldn't and as this can be cited as a violation of the 1st ammendment I say that I will play these three songs as much as I like, and if the RIAA has a problem with people listening too them, maybe they should try communism as a company policy, only allowing listners to hear what THEY want you to hear.

I'm fed up with ratings adn warnings and if a CD has something "Course" or "Questionable" in it, I honestly don't care.

Next they'll ban songs like "Undiveded" by Bon Jovi because it's associated with 9/11, gotta love those communist-wannbe cnesors who are afraid of a little freedom...