A song you wish you heard on the radio.
Sticking with the radio theme from yesterday. After discussing the repetitive playlists and the songs I do like to hear on the radio, there are a few artists which deserve playing on the airwaves too.
Casting our minds back it is easy to remember when songs were banned from playlists. Take Frankie's "Relax" for example which was only in 1984 and was successfully banned by Mike Read after he refused to play it (homophobia gone mad perhaps!?).
It goes further back than this, my favourite being the Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" The song reached number one on the NME charts in the United Kingdom, but only made it to number 2 on the official UK Singles Chart as used by the BBC. This led to accusations that the charts had been "fixed" to prevent the song from reaching number one. In March 2001, the BBC wrote that the single "reached number one in the UK in 1977 despite being banned by the BBC".
So perhaps banning songs has relatively disappeared. Now we face the necessary but evil 'editing' of songs. Now I understand the need to edit songs on the radio particularly at certain times of the day. Protecting the vulnerable listener is a good shout, however there has to be some accountability from the listener and if affected the parents of the children.
We have a watershed on the television, I think, unless I am wrong that this runs up until 9:00p.m. After which, television gets much rawer. I recently watched the first episode of the new series on Sky 1 Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. It seemed to be not only lots of ultra violence (they are Gladiators), numerous sex scenes (they are Romans) but the language featured the 'F' word almost every other sentence amongst other swear words. This programme is broadcast at 10:00p.m. after the watershed.
Now perhaps the watershed works, although talking to those who teach our younger generation, a large proportion who have seen films such as 'Saw' maybe it doesn't. I can still remember watching "An American Werewolf in London" when I was too small and the forest scene still scares me today, although the Jenny Agutter scene had & has other effects.
There is of course the storylines which many of our Soap Operas employ, are these protected by the watershed, it appears not, as they seem to dominate TV schedules all week and then all day at a weekend. Are these storylines any worse than some of the stories told after the watershed?
So the watershed is there on our televisions, but it appears that our radio stations have a watershed all day and edit almost all the time.
An unedited version of the awesome Rage Against the Machine's number 1 song "Killing In The Name Of" would be fine in my opinion after 9:00p.m. or maybe 10:00p.m. to be on the safe side.
Most Rap records would probably sound better less edited and is it me or does the editing of most songs on a radio simply just accentuate the missing words?
Editing isn't just against words, the cuts in some songs make the song unbelievably dull. Meatloaf's "Bat out of Hell" is 95% of the time edited to a shortened version, as too is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and I have never heard the full version of Free's "All Right Now" http://youtu.be/iR2V60yLIaw - extended guitar solo making the song, wait for it, a massive 5mins and 19 seconds long!
More recently playlists have become adventurous and included much more of the metal communities favourites. I remember Jo Whiley first playing "Duality" by Slipknot at about 11:30a.m. on a Monday, it was her 'record of the week' and I was most impressed. Since then artists such as Bullet For My Valentine, Lost Prophets, Enter Shikari have made daytime listening.
This year I have even heard Architects on Radio 1 during the day http://youtu.be/tKTG_oc3o_w and I know that the rock show on Radio 1 plays some bone crushing music but they are scheduled only once a week and from Midnight!
So come on lets hear some other metal music during the daytime, it's not all shouts and screams, maybe they could even play an Opeth track like http://youtu.be/tKTG_oc3o_w (granted they would need to actually release a single but hey it's a thought).
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